33-year-old pho restaurant in Hanoi has a 'rare' beef tendon dish, broth simmered for 21 hours

Thuy beef tendon pho at Thuy Khue is one of the long-standing, popular pho restaurants in Hanoi. This place is famous for its "customer-pleasing" beef tendon dish. Those who like it crispy have beef tendon that is well-cooked and crunchy. Those who like it soft have beef tendon that is well-simmered and delicious.

On weekend mornings, the restaurant is often full, with customers lining up to wait their turn. On weekdays, from 7am to 9am is when the restaurant is busiest, with customers coming and going busily. At the door, the owner and his wife and their staff are busy slicing meat, blanching noodles, pouring broth, and hurriedly serving food.

The pho restaurant is owned by Mr. Le Xuan Huynh and his wife. Mr. Huynh said that he and his wife are the second generation to continue the family pho business. His wife's parents started selling pho in 1990 at 2 Thuy Khue. Later, when the 2 Thuy Khue area was demolished, they were getting old so they decided to stop selling and pass on the recipe to their children.

Mr. Huynh and Ms. Thuy have followed in their parents' footsteps for 14 years now. They moved to their current location opposite Chu Van An High School.

"Thuy is my wife's name, and beef tendon pho is the signature dish that made the restaurant famous since my parents started selling it. When I moved here and renovated the restaurant, I decided to name it Thuy - Beef tendon pho so that people can easily remember and distinguish it," said Mr. Huynh.

At 4am every day, Huynh and his wife receive raw materials from a long-time customer. They start cleaning and processing. The beef is sorted, cleaned and filtered. All raw materials are sold out during the day, not left overnight.

The rare meat is sliced as customers eat. The brisket, flank, and core are all hand-sliced by the owner. The tendons are carefully processed and deodorized before being stewed. Mr. Huynh often painstakingly prepares both the tendons that are cooked to just-cooked, retaining their crispness, and the tendons that are stewed until tender and supple. "Stewing tendons is quite a difficult step. You have to have been doing this job for many years to know how well the tendons are done," said Mr. Huynh.

Every day, the restaurant sells about 10kg of beef tendon. "The beef tendon here is crispy, not tough, and not smelly. It's very rare to have such delicious tendons," said Quang Hung (Ba Dinh, Hanoi), a regular customer of the restaurant. On weekends, if you come late, it's hard to get a bowl of beef tendon pho.

The pho broth is simmered for 21 hours, following the family's secret recipe. Star anise and cinnamon are added in moderate amounts to ensure the broth is sweet and has a light herbal scent without being too strong. "The most important thing is that the broth must be simmered from clean, delicious bones and fresh meat," Huynh emphasized.

The restaurant's pho noodles are custom-made. The restaurant only uses hand-sliced pho noodles, which are large, chewy, soft, and absorb the broth. Before serving each bowl of pho, the owner sprinkles a little pepper on it to enhance the aroma.

The restaurant is open from 6am to 11:30am and from 5pm to 9pm. The menu has many different options such as rare, well-done, flank, flank, and core to satisfy the diverse needs of diners, priced from 50,000 to 80,000 VND per bowl, depending on the type.

The restaurant has about 10 tables inside, but it is always full during peak hours. If you come on a weekend morning, you often have to wait, or take your pho to sit at a neighboring restaurant. The restaurant is near a school, and the sidewalk is narrow, so moving around and parking is quite inconvenient if you arrive right when students arrive or leave school.

Michelin chicken pho in Hanoi's Old Quarter, priced at hundreds of thousands of VND per bowl, is still crowded with customers . At Cham Yen Ninh chicken pho, Hanoi, each bowl of pho costs from 75,000 VND to 160,000 VND. If diners order additional thigh meat, wings, eggs... each serving can cost up to 200,000 VND.

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