The Abridged version:
- Phở Bolsa, one of Little Saigon’s oldest Vietnamese restaurants, is back open with a refreshed look.
- It specializes in Northern Vietnamese dishes, including phở and bún chả.
- The Quach family’s next generation has begun taking over the restaurant, but matriarch Ming remains in the kitchen.
When Phở Bolsa closed in 2023 after 32 years in business, it seemed like another casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic. The signs remained up, and nothing took its place, but for over a year it remained closed.
Then, in May 2024, signs of life! Was Phở Bolsa … open?
The restaurant’s exterior looked the same, but the inside was different. It had a wall covered in fake vines in which nestled a pink neon sign declaring Phở Bolsa to be “phở-tastic.” It had three screens, rotating between Vietnam food travel videos and promotional clips touting Phở Bolsa’s specialties. It had a wall-sized, text-and-photo paean to phở.
The glow-up yielded a net neutral as far as cluing me in to whether the food would be as good. Did Phở Bolsa, one of the oldest Vietnamese restaurants in South Sacramento’s Little Saigon neighborhood, have new owners?
I got the phở and — joy: the pho was very good. It was made in the Northern style, less sweet and served with a restrained helping of herbs rather than a plateful.
The phở seemed the same, and I was pretty sure that the woman leading the kitchen was the long-time Bolsa matriarch. But a repeat visit to eat the bún riêu (a soup with crab-based meatballs and tomato), one of Phở Bolsa’s specialties, was needed to be sure.
Those pillow-soft meatballs, the umami of the tomato-y broth, it was all as I remembered. Not only was the bún riêu divine, but when I talked to owner Thomas Quach, he confirmed that his family, the original owners, had reopened the restaurant at 5815 Stockton Blvd., Suite A.
Phở Bolsa was named after Bolsa Avenue in Orange County, where Quach’s uncle owned a couple of restaurants. The area that Bolsa Avenue travels through is designated as Little Saigon, just like the area surrounding Phở Bolsa in South Sacramento, and is home to the largest Vietnamese American community in the U.S.
Quach said his father, Tai, was known as one of his uncle’s best workers. When Quach’s uncle began looking to expand up north in 1991, he knew who to tap.
“My uncle said, ‘Hey, if you are interested, we want to expand,’” Quach said. “So they picked Sacramento somehow. … He came here with two bags of clothes, some money, and with my brother and a couple of friends. They got together and opened the (Phở) Bolsa in Sacramento.”
The rest of Tai Quach’s family joined him in 1994 from Canada, where they had been living. Thomas began working at Phở Bolsa at 14 years old, washing dishes in the back. While he didn’t particularly enjoy his assignment, he knew he wasn’t the only one working hard.
“I remember my dad has to wake up at 6 o’clock every morning, and they don’t get home until 8:30 at night, and then we have to wait for them to come home so that we can eat together as a family,” Quach said.
But Quach also recalls the restaurant as a gathering place for the community and a constant in his own life. After moving away and attending college, he launched multiple restaurants in the Bay Area before coming back to Sacramento to open Asian fusion restaurant Koja Kitchen in 2019.
The pandemic hit Phở Bolsa hard, and many longtime employees left during that time, leaving mostly just Tai Quach and his wife Ming running Phở Bolsa. They eventually decided to retire, and shut the restaurant down. But the family grew to miss Phở Bolsa, so Thomas Quach decided to reopen it.
“I grew up there, you know? My kids grew up with eating noodles there, so they all miss it. My oldest son always talks about, like, ‘When can we eat grandma’s chicken noodle soup?’” Quach said. “So we had a family meeting, and then we decided, okay, we’re just gonna move forward and keep this legacy.”
Phở Bolsa reopened, but Tai Quach died suddenly a few months later. Now customers might see Ming in the kitchen, Thomas bustling around on the phone and his sister Ling serving and working the till.
Frank Louie, executive director of the Stockton Boulevard Partnership, said family businesses like Phở Bolsa are vital to keep Little Saigon vibrant.
“I’m so happy and delighted we have second-generation businesses that are continuing along the boulevard,” Louie said. “That really speaks of the cultural aspect, but also, having that succession plan is important and is a key component in the longevity and keeping Stockton Boulevard relevant.”
Had Phở Bolsa closed for good, the Sacramento region would’ve lost one of its few Northern-style Vietnamese restaurants. Quach’s parents both immigrated from Hanoi, and brought an affinity for Northern Vietnamese specialties such as bún chả.
Created in Hanoi, bún chả coats grilled pork meatballs and vermicelli noodles in a sweet-and-savory fish sauce. Phở Bolsa’s bún chả is named for Đồng Xuân Market, a huge emporium in the Vietnamese capital city, and made with hand-pressed meatballs that come out extra fluffy.
Those traditional touches have kept customers coming back to Phở Bolsa for generations. While the updated decor might attract new customers, the kitchen is staying true to its roots.
Becky Grunewald is a freelance journalist in the Sacramento region.