About DC Restaurant Openings
A guide to the newest places to eat and drink.
Phở Thìn. 7263 Arlington Blvd., Falls Church
Northern Virginians know their phở. Vietnamese immigrants have been ladling it out in Arlington and Falls Church since shortly after the fall of Saigon, so if you live anywhere within a 25-mile radius of the Eden Center, you probably know the drill: pick from beefy toppings like rare eye-of-round, brisket, and tripe; dump in some herbs; don’t overdo it with the hoisin sauce. There isn’t usually much variation.
That’s why the opening of Phở Thìn 13 Lò Đúc—Phở Thìn for short—in April has generated quite a bit of excitement.
An outpost of a famous Hanoi chain founded in 1979, the Falls Church newcomer its own signature style of northern-style phở. It’s topped with thin-sliced ribeye that has been stir-fried with garlic.
Phở Thìn has been slowly expanding. After locations opened in Japan and Australia, a Californian named Vicky Nguyen opened the chain’s first US location in Orange County’s Little Saigon in 2023.
“This is definitely a new category,” says Pimmie Juntranggur, one of the partners managing the new Falls Church location. “Unless you travel to Orange County, or you actually fly to Vietnam to try this, there’s nothing like it.”
Juntranggur and a group of her friends helped Nguyen open the franchise here. She said Phở Thìn’s founder, Nguyễn Trọng Thìn, was particularly excited about opening in northern Virginia because of the area’s large Vietnamese population and proximity to the nation’s capital.
Northern phở is generally more austere than southern-style (which is much more common in the US), with a cleaner, more delicately spiced broth, wider flat rice noodles, and a simple garnish of green onions. Chili or garlic vinegar, rather than hoisin sauce, often comes on the side.
The garlicky, wok-seared beef topping is unique to Phở Thìn, which still draws long lines at its original Hanoi location. The 5,000-square-foot Virginia location, which takes over two strip mall spaces formerly occupied by Pho Tu Ech plus the Verizon store next door, has been extremely busy too. On one recent weeknight, the shop sold out of broth well before closing time.
Juntranggur advises anyone who’s never had this style of phở to skip the usual sauces and try dipping the beef and noodles into the restaurant’s house made pickled garlic, which comes complimentary on every table, instead.
“I don’t even reach for Hoisin and sriracha at all anymore,” she says.
Ike Allen covers politics, food, culture, and transportation in DC and writes the monthly Hidden Eats column for the magazine. He grew up in DC.
