16.324 Chá Giò

Cycle 16 – Item 324

Post 5,803

25 (Tue) November 2025

Chá Giò

3.5

-Changgok, Sujeong, Seongnam, Gyeonggi, Republic of Korea-

with W

Hoàng Viêt is a Vietnamese restaurant. Specializes in pho (of course), plus a handful of additional items. Part of a franchise – under Korean ownership, apparently – currently 25 locations across the capital region.

Vietnamese cuisine (as with most foreign cuisines in Korea) has a long way to go. Franchise chains – poorly conceived, poorly executed – dominate (see for example 14.278 Chicken Rice with Soy Sauce). Beyond pho, the menu options are virtually non-existent.

The other side includes Korean subtitles.

From the first glance at the storefront, through the entire meal, until just a moment ago (nearly a month later) when I saw the company’s website and discovered its true nature, I’d been thoroughly and very joyously convinced that Hoàng Viêt was an authentic, independent Vietnamese restaurant, owned and operated by Vietnamese people. The overwhelming evidence: Vietnamese(-looking) signage, furnishings, utensils; Vietnamese staff; diacritics and tone marks on all Vietnamese writing; menu entirely in Vietnamese; 14 items not pho vs 7 pho; Vietnamese condiments; no pickles; copious amounts of free cilantro; authentic food; reasonable prices.

Clearly, whoever is behind the brand has first-hand knowledge or did their homework or brought in experts to advise.

(I am mindful that certain aspects could be complete bullshit, like the Vietnamese words could be spelled wrong or outright gibberish.)

We did wonder whether the decor had been deliberately grunged up to make it feel more real, or this is just the way that a Vietnamese shop owner would do it.

As much as I abhor franchise chains in Korea (see for example 14.118 Rice-Noodle Pho with Beef Brisket) – where the main objective is to dumb down the food, primarily so the owner can easily manage preparation, secondarily so the customer is satisfied (though never impressed, never disappointed) – I wouldn’t mind if they were like this: using the money and knowledge of a corporation to offer an elevated standard of food and an enhanced experience that a solo operator would have difficulty managing (see for example 16.312 Pho Bo).