9 Vietnamese restaurants in the SGV, for banh mi and beyond

Born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley, I can tell you that it has been an absolute pleasure as someone who loves food: The culinary landscape is bountiful, exciting and ever-changing. My entire family would pile into the car and drive along Valley Boulevard, scanning for new restaurants, looking left and right for unfamiliar signs or grand opening banners. The prominence of Chinese and Taiwanese restaurants in the SGV is evident on virtually every strip mall sign bearing Chinese logograms (with translated English business names that usually mean something else entirely). But I was always intrigued by the occasional romanized words with diacritcal marks that signify a Vietnamese establishment. They planted the seeds of an obsession.

I still remember my first bowl of pho in the ’80s when it was $3.75. To a Chinese American kid, the noodles and broth looked familiar, but the aroma and taste were unlike anything I had experienced. It would be the first of hundreds of Vietnamese noodle soups I have eaten across Southern California, other Vietnamese enclaves in America and ultimately in Vietnam.

Dozens of Vietnamese restaurants are strewn throughout Rosemead, San Gabriel, El Monte and South El Monte. But the number is minuscule compared to Orange County’s Little Saigon, the most prominent Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam. In that sense, the San Gabriel Valley is always in its shadow. Even my parents knew it was better to make the one-hour trek each way to Westminster and Garden Grove, the two cities that Little Saigon straddles, for the best Vietnamese food and groceries. We’d spend hours at shopping centers such as Phuoc Loc Tho (Asian Garden Mall), absorbing the culture through food.

Driving down to Orange County for a “Little Saigon-a-thon” became my monthly tradition — in which I would visit as many new and old restaurants as my stomach could bear in a single trip. But everything changed during the pandemic (and once gas prices skyrocketed). I shifted my attention back to the Vietnamese restaurants of the SGV. Longtime businesses such as Golden Deli, Summer Rolls (formerly Nem Nuong Ninh Hoa), Nha Trang and Newport Seafood are still around, but more recently, I’ve focused on several places that are notable and newish (they’ve opened in the last couple of years) and as delicious as many favorites in Little Saigon. They also show that there’s more to Vietnamese food than pho, bun and banh mi.