The Globe and Mail

Have you ever found yourself driving through Vancouver on that busy stretch of the Kingsway lined with endless Vietnamese holes-in-the-wall? Were you captivated by the spicy aromas and eager to go eat something, yet intimidated about where to start?

It’s about to get easier. The Kingsway corridor, between Fraser and Nanaimo streets, will soon be renamed Little Saigon. Last fall, Vancouver city council approved a motion to designate this area as a distinct Vietnamese district, and city staffers are developing a work plan for street signs, banners and English translations.

But adventurous diners may still need more help sifting the pho (pronounced fuh, as in pot-au-feu), from the baloney (or boiled pork belly). According to the numbers crunched by Andy Yan, an urban researcher with Bing Thom Architects, this three-kilometre stretch has 31 Vietnamese eateries. That’s one for every 96 metres!

To help you get going, The Dish has spent several weeks feasting at pho shops, seafood restaurants, bakeries and delis to compile this introductory guide to big eating in Little Saigon.

Ba Le French Sandwiches

701 Kingsway; 604-875-0088

A gateway dish for many Vietnamese-food addicts, bahn mi takes a crusty baguette, swipes it with pâté, piles it high with pork cold cuts, meatballs or lemongrass chicken and stuffs it with cucumber, cilantro, jalapeno, and pickled daikon and carrot. Ba Le doesn’t make the best Vietnamese subs in town (too much mayo, not enough veggies). But its house-cured bacon, which can be stacked in a sandwich or bought by the kilo for sizzling at home, is sliced from the silkiest pork belly rolls around.

Pho Thuan An

789 Kingsway; 604-872-8931

With so many rubbery, imitation crabsticks bobbing along the Kingsway, the banh canh cua thit gio heo (menu item #48) at this cheerful hole-in-the-wall swims laps around the competition. The dark-orange, paprika-spiced soup is built from a rich Dungeness broth thickened by starchy udon-style noodles. Bursting with pork, green onions and fistfuls of freshly picked crabmeat, it’s a steal of a meal at $6.75.

Green Lemongrass Vietnamese Cuisine

1086 Kingsway; 604-875-6638

Good morning, Vietnam. Kick-start the day with French-roast coffee slow-dripped over sweet condensed milk, aromatic beef stew and toasted baguette (#4), sticky rice cakes and crisp onions on a fried egg (#12) or plump, glutinous, Imperial-style dumplings (#13 to #15) wrapped in banana leaves. Note: You must ask for the breakfast menu, available until 11 a.m.

Tung Hing Bakery

1198 Kingsway; 604-875-3393

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Tung Hing Special is Vancouver’s pre-eminent bahn mi. The baguettes are crisply crusted yet light and soft inside, always fresh and usually warm. Substantial pork filling – bacon, sausage and mottled headcheese – is a heavenly trinity of house-cured swine, boosted by peppery pâté. Mayonnaise is rich, but not overwhelming. And the sandwich is generously topped with a crisp thatch of veggies. Add a sweetly glazed butter bun and here you have the ultimate take-out lunch – for less than $5.

Hai Phong Restaurant

1246 Kingsway; 604-872-3828

If you like Singapore-style chili crab, you’ll love the sweet-and-sour tamarind version at Hai Phong, one of Vancouver’s rare Vietnamese seafood restaurants. The kitchen tosses roughly cleaved Dungeness crab ($13 a pound) in tamarind concentrate, sugar, garlic, ginger, chili, green onions, plus a few other secret ingredients, and stir-fries it over high heat until the sauce thickens and coats the shells in a sticky caramelized crust. Roll up your sleeves and get cracking.

Kim Chau Delicatessen

1327 Kingsway; 604-255-8385

Feel like making pho? At Kim Chau, a neighbourhood institution for 20-plus years, you’ll find house-made stock, springy meatballs and ground-spice sachets that will save hours in the kitchen. The friendly new owners even offer unsolicited cooking tips (add roasted and mashed garlic and ginger to deepen your soup’s flavour).

Pho Thai Hoa

1625 Kingsway; 604-873-2348

Although best known for its pho, this festive generalist restaurant draped in Christmas garlands and painted with a blue-sky ceiling mural also grills great meat. Try succulent charred beef, tenderized in sweet lemongrass marinade, over vermicelli noodles or in toasted bahn mi.

My Chau Restaurant

1715A Kingsway; 604-874-6880

It’s no wonder this small, unassuming soup joint bustles all day long with construction workers, old men and what looks like the young, muscular cast of the Ho Chi Minh Jersey Shore. The pho is fantastic. Go for the special beef noodle pho bo dac biet (#4) with rare beef, well-done flank, tender tripe and beef balls in a deeply meaty, cleanly seasoned broth. Or the lighter pho ga don (#3), served with a side of fried chicken.

88 Supermarket

4801 Victoria Dr.; 604-876-2128

A few blocks from Kingsway, but well worth the detour. This Vietnamese grocery houses a vast butcher shop (whole pig heads for $5), live seafood tanks (kusshi oysters at 99 cents a pop) and an unrivalled variety of hard-to-find South Asian fruits, herbs and vegetables (banana flowers, crab claw, la lot and more).

Chau Veggie Express

5052 Victoria Dr.; 604-568-9508

Also off the strip, but notable for its modern aesthetics and all-vegetarian menu. Run by Maria Huynh (former owner of Robson Street’s now-closed Chau Restaurant) and her mother, Chau (the original and long-time proprietor of Kim Chau Deli), this casual restaurant with communal seating infuses surprisingly bold flavours into spicy saté noodles and sweet mushroom-lychee-date soup stock. If only the bean curd, faux-ham and green papaya bahn mi were made with toothier bread.

Café Xu Hue

2226 Kingsway; 604-454-9940

Bun bo hue is spicy beef noodle soup from Hue, the former imperial capital of the last-ruling Nguyen dynasty in central Vietnam. Think pho on steroids. Not commonly found in Vancouver, the thick, marrowy beef-bone broth with an oily red-chili float is here served chockfull of vermicelli noodles, fatty pork knuckle and smooth cubes of congealed pork blood. Not for the faint of feasting, but perhaps a fittingly sumptuous finale for your culinary tour of Little Saigon.