Family recipes for regional culinary styles go back generations
Published in the December 25, 2013-January 7, 2014 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Staff Report
Photo by Marty Cheek
Sandy and Tom Moller relax with a glass of wine in their Satori Cellars winery south of Morgan Hill.
Step inside the Morgan Hill Pho Noodle House around noon lunchtime and you’ll find a restaurant packed with patrons who come to enjoy traditional Vietnamese noodle dishes, as well as the popular bánh mì sandwiches. The restaurant’s menu is extensive, tempting diners with a wide range of dishes and beverages for both lunch and dinner.
The eatery’s decor offers a combination of wall television sets playing news and sports broadcasts and shelf decorations featuring quirky golden cat figurines waving their paws in a friendly way and an assortment of small golden Buddha statues grinning at customers.
Owner Tuoi Thanh Le and his wife and mother-in-law started the restaurant about six years ago in the Morgan Hill Plaza shopping center between the Dollar Tree and Ross Dress for Less stores. Before that, Le had learned about the restaurant business while working in a Vietnamese diner in San Jose as well as a now closed Vietnamese restaurant in the Cochrane Plaza.
“My mother-in-law, she has been about 30 years here and she knows a lot about Vietnamese food from north, south and central Vietnam,” he said. “She learned how to cook from her mom. Her mom learned from her mother so it goes back generations. That’s why the food is traditional.”
He is from south Vietnam and his wife and mother-in-law are from central Vietnam, so they prepare a combination of regional Vietnamese culinary styles in the kitchen. Morgan Hill Pho Noodle House has developed a solid reputation among many Vietnamese in the South Bay for the authenticity of its traditional cooking.
The restaurant has a shaded outdoor seating area that is popular during the warm months of the year. “People love to sit outside in the summer,” Le said. “And in winter, they go inside and that’s why I expanded the restaurant.”
The specialty of the restaurant is pho, a Vietnamese rice noodle soup served with bean sprouts, basil, lime, and jalapeño and patrons find it very filling.
In addition to noodle and rice dishes, the restaurant also offers traditional bánh mì sandwiches which are served on French baguettes, a carry over from the French colonial era of Vietnam. Choices of barbecued meat for this tasty selection include pork, beef and chicken. The restaurant also offers take-out orders and party trays to go.
Because of its popularity, lunch time at the Noodle House can get crowded and diners sometimes will need to wait for their orders. But many discover that their patience is well worth the wait when their food arrives at their table. “Mostly they eat soup, noodle, rice, vermicelli at lunch,” Le said. “We do healthy (food) and the price is a good price for good food.”
PHO NOODLE HOUSE
Location: 16965 Monterey Road, Suite 102 B
Hours: 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily
Contact: (408) 779-1728
