Cafe East Phò

Last Updated on March 15, 2026

Vietnamese home cooking comes to Central London

4.5 out of 5.0 stars

Recently opened in Holborn, Café East Pho is a popular restaurant that has its origins in Deptford. It opened in South East London in 1997, when Madam Ngoc opened a small café, bringing authentic Vietnamese cuisine to her diners. In no time, her phò broth, simmered for 12 hours, became very popular and when she retired, the next generation moved Café East to Blackheath in 2023.  This venture has been so successful that a second branch has now come to Central London.

A few minutes’ walk from the British Museum, Café East Pho is located on a busy road surrounded by office blocks. One enters the sliding door to find a simple interior decorated with Vietnamese hats and bamboo. Well-spaced tables are imprinted with a peacock design inlaid onto wooden tables.

I usually avoid restaurants with photographs of the food, but unless you are very familiar with the names of Vietnamese dishes, this is a helpful addition to the menu. The service is both welcoming and friendly and our host helped us to negotiate the menu, ensuring that we ended up with a feast. On a Sunday lunchtime, there were a number of families with young children. During the week, I expect that amongst the diners will be students (the restaurant is close to UCL) and people working in the area.

There is a short wine list, but you may prefer to select from the three Asian beers or one of the homemade non-alcoholic drinks. My husband settled in with an iced coffee which had a good coffee flavour and lots of ice. I tried the fresh lime soda which was refreshingly well-balanced and not too sweet.

We initially selected a starter each from the thirteen options on the menu, but such was the enthusiasm of our charming host that we ended up with five starters, which would have been enough for a meal. Order a cold Saigon beer as my husband did, kick back and enjoy the salt and pepper king prawns. These were utterly delicious, with a crispy batter, salty but not overly so. It was attractively served with red onion, red chilli, green coriander, spring onion, and crispy shallots. One portion was more than enough to share.

Vegetarians are not neglected at Café East, and the salt and pepper king oyster mushrooms were also wickedly moreish. They looked like chips – cut into long strips and fried in batter. These came with a colourful topping of crispy shallots, onions, lemongrass, chilli and coriander.

Gòi Cuòn – Vietnamese fresh spring rolls filled with pork, prawn and veg – was another dish I will re-order. I was unable to do justice to this very pretty arrangement as there was simply too much food to eat. Once again, one portion is more than adequate for two people. There were three large rice paper-wrapped parcels, each cut in half, packed with pink prawns and greenery. Served with a dipping sauce sprinkled with chilli powder and chopped peanuts, it was as refreshing to eat as to look at – fresh, sweet and crunchy.

Our host was keen for us to try a popular dish called Banh Guon – Vietnamese steamed rice rolls. This was a Jenga pile of thin and delicate rolls which originate from North Vietnam. The wrapping is a thin sheet of fermented rice batter that is steamed and stretched over a pot of boiling water.  Then it is filled with ground pork, minced wood ear mushroom and minced shallots. It came with a serving of thin slices of pork sausage and was strewn with bean sprouts, crispy shallots, and coriander.

A plate of Chà Giò – fried spring rolls filled with pork and prawn – was served with a spicy nuoc mam dipping sauce. The spring roll pastry wrapper was hot and crispy with a well-spiced filling.

The main courses are divided into 14  house specials, five dry vermicelli dishes, eight phò dishes, and four phò kho options. With such an array of choices, we were grateful to be advised by our host. The mains can all be ordered either spicy or non-spicy and there is a ceramic jar filled with chilli oil on the table should you want to spice things up further. The main courses are accompanied by a plate of herbs, lemon and extra fresh chilli so that you can add these to the steaming bowls of phò. I had my eye on the spicy and sour crispy sea bass, but we could not resist the phò.

My husband tried Phò Tái, one of the signature phò dishes, which was served with lean rare beef.  The broth was full of umami and richly flavoured, with the fragrance of star anise shining through. It is the kind of broth you want to eat on its own to warm your bones on a cold day. Here, it was filled with lovely noodles, meat and spring onion.

I tried one of the Phò Khô dishes, which are rice noodles served with a side bowl of broth for dipping. Phò Khô Cay included thin slices of beef flank, chicken, and prawns along with spicy noodles. The noodles were a lovely shade of yellow, and there were lots of tender chicken pieces, prawns and beef slices. The dipping broth was not overly spicy. This was an aromatic and fragrant dish with contrasting sweet and spicy flavours and lovely crunch from chopped spring onions.

Café East has two desserts which were sold out when we visited but on a return visit I will try the mango pomelo sago or the Café East ice cream. Instead, we enjoyed Osmanthus-scented black tea – a fruity tea which tasted of peach. This was a gentle end to a palate-pleasing meal. With the tea, we were fortunate to be served a plate of sweetmeats specially made for the new year that was currently being celebrated. Dried strips of sugared coconut and a lotus root sweet were intriguing and very good.

Café East is a relaxing restaurant with tasty, well-presented dishes and generous portions. The menu is packed with tempting dishes and we ended up ordering far too much, by way of tasting as much as we could for the review. We left with our lips tingling pleasantly from the spices. Our experience at Café East was one of being warmly welcomed and sumptuously fed, guided by the outstanding assistance of our host, Sylvian. A return visit is needed to do justice to the spread on offer.  

Café East is open daily for lunch and dinner.

Cafe East Pho Holborn, 31-33 Bloomsbury Way, London, WC1A 2SA

Telephone: 020 72427280

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