Madame Pho is a family business. Founder-owner, Hoang Nam Trung, has lived in Budapest for around 20 years. Although he didn’t have his own restaurant before, he has tried his hand at many things. Then family and friends persuaded him to open up this eatery despite the not insignificant number of pho places in town. These same family and friends rated Trung's mother-in-law, chef Chuyen very highly, and that proved the deciding factor.
In fact, this was nothing new, as the Trung family is behind one of the city’s oldest and best Vietnamese restaurants, Hanoi Xua. It has proved to be the perfect start.
Entering Madame Pho, the first thing that stands out is that its design. Of course, guests always come back to any restaurant because of the great dishes, but its interior may not win over at first sight.
This is a bit like going to a Vietnamese restaurant in Berlin or London – a slightly trashy aesthetic but at the same time authentic, with echoes of Vietnam in the 1950s before the French left. On imitation slate walls, you see posters typical of the 1950s’ France – with their own Vietnamese mood, of course.
The design comprises the handprints of Budapest-based creatives Socially, who were originally asked to make only one mural, eventually reshaping the entire design with art director Eszter Csontos. Here a French colonial past mingles with millennial South-East Asian art traditions, Vietnamese propaganda and a blend of Asian neon intoxication.
The menu is not short, not long, just the right length. It consists of four sections: appetisers, soups, wok dishes and mains. Although the family came from Hanoi, not only do they make masterpieces of northern cuisine, you can also southern and central Vietnamese dishes on the menu.
As you sample, you get the distinct feeling that the food was prepared with special care, as if it was really just made for us by a Vietnamese grandmother, aka Madame Pho. In addition to the usual vegetables, glass noodles and very finely ground pork, the crispy outer layer of the spring roll (990 HUF) also has bean sprouts, wood-ear and fragrant mushrooms – and for the hot rolls, you receive nouc cham, the indispensable Vietnamese dipping sauce based on fish sauce.
The summer roll (HUF 990) is zingy and fresh – it comes with crab, and the refreshing nature is due to the sprinkling of perilla, a kind of Asian basil, and coriander. You can also dunk it in the hoisin-based peanut sauce that accompanies it. As a Vietnamese restaurant, the main focus is on soups: there are seven basic ones to choose from and, since there are serious debates around Budapest as to which Vietnamese restaurant makes the best pho, on our visit we started out the most basic and iconic.
Pho doesn't have a basic recipe like broth, so it's no wonder they’re made differently everywhere, and everyone has their favourite. And the name and the basic idea came from the beef stew of the French who lived there for a long time, pot-au-feu. The pho soup with beef (1,890 HUF) is hearty and tasty, especially with the lean beef and plentiful greens. It’s quite light, as pho soups should be, not too aromatic, but on the scale of pho soups available throughout the city, it belongs to those with character. It contains a lot of thinly cut, sweet onions and green spices, and the garlic and chili are not just there for show.
Bun soup Hue-style (2,290 HUF) is a completely different animal, a much spicier and fierier dish, with the same base as the aforementioned pho bo, with a lot of beef and green spices. This stronger, more characteristic soup comes with bun noodles and is boosted with Vietnamese ham.
The house is particularly proud of one specific dish, bun noodles Hanoi-style (2,590 HUF). Bun cha consists of two types of meat, pork meatballs and caramelised bacon, which comes in an spectacularly rich, spicy sauce with plenty of chopped garlic. Alongside is the polar opposite, baked bun noodles with fresh perilla – you should eat the two together, dipping the pasta into the spicy juice with each bite.
The wok dishes also avoid the one mistake often made in Far Eastern restaurants: the wok-made rice noodles (2,190 HUF) and toasted rice with eggs and vegetables (2,190 HUF) are particularly juicy. After piles of meat, we chose the vegetable options, and discovered that the juiciness doesn’t come from rice or pasta being in soy or fish sauce but thanks to the well-selected, thinly cut vegetables. On top of that, plenty of fried onions gave a good crunchy contrast to the whole affair.
Desserts are available, as is Vietnamese coffee, including an iced version (890 HUF). The large dose of coffee is almost a dessert in itself, and suits the humidity of summer and Vietnam.
Original flavours concocted with special care, kind service and wallet-friendly prices should all ensure a re-visit to family-run Madame Pho.
Madame Pho
District VIII. Corvin sétány 5
Open: Daily 11am-10pm
