We went for some Vietnamese while our visit to California and met up our family Pho Ao Sen and it’s located right on 12th Street. This restaurant is so busy and they have parking both beside the restaurant and across the street.
We started with the standard, some salad roll, which they call Goi Cuon- Spring Rolls, which looks really impressive! The taste was quite amazing as well, even their dipping sauce was pretty unique and very delicious! These huge salad rolls were stuffed with both shrimp and pork, and the standard stuff like vermicelli, mint, bean sprouts and lettuce.
We also got another standard appetizer, the Cha Gio- Egg Rolls which was the crispy/fried version of the Vietnamese Spring Roll. They call it an egg roll here, which is quite different from a Chinese Egg Roll, but a lot of people use these terms interchangeable. These Egg Rolls was a mixture of ground pork, shrimp, vegetables, cellophane noodles, and wrapped then fried to perfection. It was actually really tasty without the dipping sauce!
I was still fighting the tail end of my cold on this day, so I ordered a nice hot bowl of Pho Gai which is their Chicken pho. The bowl of noodles was huge and there was a huge amount of chicken. The broth was tasty!
Then, my husband ordered the Beef Stew soup, what they call Pho Hoac Mi Bo Kho which was really fragrant and flavourful. The soup was really quite thick though, it was unique and very different from the ones we have here! This bowl of soup and tons of everything which made it extraordinary delicious!
Overall, this place was pretty amazing! No wonder it’s a favourite of so many people! I’m sure we will be back some day!
Pho Ao Sen
1139 E. 12th Street
Oakland, CA
(510) 835-5588
