Walking through the glass doors of Pho Hien Vuong on Spring Garden Street, I’m greeted by a statue of a smiling Buddha. Inside, the smell of food hits my nose. Dozens of tables wait to be filled, the walls are hung with intricate artwork, an altar next to the takeout counter decorated with gifts.
It makes me feel at home.
I fell in love with my favorite food, pad thai, at Indochine in my hometown of Wilmington, NC. My family would celebrate birthdays and special occasions there, where we would wait for a table in the restaurant ornately and lovingly decorated by Niki, Indochine’s beloved owner, who passed away in December. It’s where I learned to use chopsticks to pick up the rice noodles coated in a blend of fish sauce, tamarind paste, and sugar, topped with bean sprouts, shaved carrots, green onions, protein, and sprinkled with crushed peanuts.
When I took a reporting job with Triad City Beat, I packed up everything I owned and moved to Winston-Salem. I knew no one, and nothing reminded me of home until my first pad thai with Managing Editor Sayaka Matsuoka and Publisher Brian Clarey at Pho Hien Vuong. Over the next two years, whenever he’d send us a message asking if we wanted to get lunch, one of us would usually ping back a “pho?” followed in short order by “pho!!” from the other.
Every restaurant makes its pad thai a little differently. When I want a drier and sweeter version, I’ll go to Thai Sawatdee in Winston-Salem. When I want one that’s a little more savory, I go to Thai Square on Battleground Avenue. But Pho Hien Vuong is my Greensboro home.
The restaurant’s manager, Trang Trinh, told me how her family came to North Carolina from Vietnam in 1990 when she was a small child.
“We came with pretty much nothing in our pockets,” Trinh said, “We relied heavily on a lot of the local support in the community when we first moved here.” Her mother, Cuc Lam, worked as a maid while her father, Kia, worked the third shift in a tool factory.
Then, her mother started working with the late Jennifer Gregory, who passed away in 2020, to open Pho Hien Vuong in 1996, a marriage of Thai and Vietnamese cuisine.
After school, Trinh did her homework at one of the booths before helping wash vegetables and clean tables. Running a small business is not easy, Trinh said. She remembers her mother, now 88, working there seven days a week, 14 hours a day.
“There’s a lot of work, a lot of things that come into play before a specific dish can even be delivered to a table,” Trinh said. Some employees have worked there for more than a decade.
With a changing economy and rising prices, Trinh said they’ve had to adapt to deliver the same quality customers have enjoyed throughout the years. The community notices their effort. Some customers have frequented the restaurant since it opened.
“As a small business, we are very thankful that we even have a chance to be able to serve the community, and that the community is in full support of us,” Trinh said, “We come to work every day with the happiest intention of serving the best meal for our patrons, just hoping that it gives them a little comfort.”
And even on a Monday, Pho Hien Vuong’s day off, the work never stops as they prepare to open the next day. That’s what a home feels like to me, a place that is ever changing, growing, and nourishing.