phuong trang: authentic vietnamese in san diego

Convoy is one smorgasbord of delicious Asian food. It’s a street in the neighborhood of Kearny Mesa that’s filled with eats from Thailand, China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam and The Philippines. Food is usually cheap and almost always authentic, but the problem is picking a place. How do you know what’s best when there are so many options?

Well, you blindly pick one.

OK, maybe you shouldn’t do that, but that method worked well for me on Saturday night. If my recent hunger pangs for pho meant anything, we started knowing that we wanted Vietnamese food. Since Yelp and its too-many opinions can be overwhelming, I flipped through San Diego Magazine‘s Asian Food Guide issue instead and took a shot in the dark.

The place? Phuong Trang. The prices? Crazy good. (Like $6.25-for-a-large-noodle-entree good.) The food? Also crazy good — Vietnamese with everything from pho and noodle bowls to hot pots and rice paper wraps (a DIY dish Eaman loved in Vietnam). Apparently my blind pick was pretty on-target because the next morning a friend told me that Phuong Trang comes highly recommended from her Vietnamese friends.

Between the six of us, there were shrimp noodle bowls, vegetarian noodle bowls, pho and garlic chicken wings. The bun xao bo hoac ga — a beef noodle dish and our favorite street eat in Hanoi — was a faithful rendition and the garlic wings had a nice kick and tender meat. Oh and as for the pho, after all those dreams about hot, tangy soup, I wasn’t even paying attention when I ordered and asked for the vegetarian noodle bowl by accident. (It comes with its own non-fish, vegetarian sauce!) Fortunately this place is so good that even when you order just as absent-mindedly as your process was to pick the place, you still get something worth writing home about. (See: this blog post.) And I don’t totally mind that I messed up my own order; it’s a good excuse for going back sooner rather than later.

There are also a handful of Asian bakeries on Convoy, and when we found out Tea Garden — a Taiwanese dessert shop with food, bubble tea and shaved ice — was closed for renovations (nooooooo!), the remaining three of us rerouted to Pangea Bakery. The shelves were nearly bare since it was near close time, but I snagged a cake pop (what an authentic Asian choice, right?) and Eaman picked up green tea cookies, which were perfect with coffee on yesterday’s snoozy Sunday. Also worth noting is Pangea’s huge space comes with free WiFi and an extensive coffee list. Hope you like your studying with a side of egg tarts!

Phuong Trang | 4170 Convoy St, San Diego | 858.565.6750
Pangea Bakery | 4689 Convoy St #100, San Diego | 858.560.0688