How one man became the “Pho King” of Utah’s noodle scene
By Mya Constantino
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SALT LAKE CITY (KSTU) — Inside Pho Hao in West Valley City, a steaming bowl of Pho arrived at the table, its slow-simmered broth rich with spice, thin slices of meat tucked between noodles, and fresh herbs floating on top.
“There’s just something nourishing and comforting about a bowl of pho,” Brandon Luong said at the table.
Online, Luong is known as the “Pho King.” He has reviewed more than 50 pho restaurants across Utah. He says his personal Pho quest started with a simple spreadsheet back in 2021.
“I just went from restaurant to restaurant and made a spreadsheet for myself,” he said. “Some of my friends were like, ‘Hey, can I get that spreadsheet from you?’ Then they were like, ‘You should put it on Reddit.’ I’m like, ‘What do I call it?’ I’m like, ‘Oh, I’ll make a joke — I’m the King of Pho. I’m the Pho King.’”
The name stuck.
Luong, who grew up in South Jordan, has since eaten his way through Salt Lake, Summit, and Utah counties, even creating a basketball-inspired graph to rank each bowl. He said he borrowed the idea from a player stat chart he found; he plots restaurants along an X and Y axis, complete with images.
“I saw this graph that plotted out basketball players,” he said. “It just had a picture and a cutout of their faces.”
When it comes to judging pho, Luong says the broth makes up about 80 percent of the score. “For me, the perfect bowl tastes like a hug,” he said. “It’s reinvigorating. It feels almost healing in a way.”
Some say pho restaurants with numbers in their names often stand out as signs they may be authentic, family-owned spots — and that the food will likely be good. Fox 13 News asked whether he thinks that still holds true.
“That’s generally a good sign,” Luong said with a laugh. “The number is never actually random. It’s usually a number that means something to the restaurant owner or their family — maybe the year their grandma was born, the year they opened.”
Luong said after moving out of his family’s home, he stopped eating the dish for a time. When he eventually returned to it, he found something deeper. “It’s definitely the tastiest way for me to discover parts of my culture that I didn’t know existed,” he explained.
Despite tasting dozens of bowls across Utah, Luong says his favorite is the Pho he grew up eating at home. “I always say the secret ingredient to Pho is time,” he said. “But the secret ingredient to all food is nostalgia. That’s just a taste you can’t replicate.”
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