Pho 45 – Garden Grove, CA

9240 Garden Grove Blvd #19

Garden Grove, CA 92844

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

Located along busy Garden Grove Boulevard in Garden Grove, Pho 45 serves up traditional Vietnamese food in a predominately Korean neighborhood. After you park in the strip mall with adequate amounts of parking spaces, you enter a fairly small restaurant that has been recently renovated. Plenty of servers are available to take your order usually around 1-2 minutes after you receive the menu.

Today, we decided to try the large order of shrimp spring rolls, filet Mignon pho with wide noodles, and the grilled pork and egg roll vermicelli noodles. The shrimp rolls tasted pretty dry on their own and did not come with pork like in many other restaurants, but they did have bean sprouts inside, which I was not expecting. Instead of using the provided peanut sauce, I opted to use hoisin sauce, which added some savory flavor to the fairly bland roll. The filet Mignon was sliced fairly thin and cooked quickly in the hot broth. Each bite of the beef tasted tender and flavorful. The broth itself was fairly clear, but has strong notes of beef flavor. I really liked how the broth carried lots of flavor and not much oil at all. The noodles were fresh and were nice and different because they were wider and softer. The egg rolls tasted simple, fresh, and went well with the dipping sauce. There were quite a bit of vegetables and meat in the vermicelli dish, but a lot of the pork was overly fatty compared to other Vietnamese restaurants. Like the spring rolls, bean sprouts were also in this dish by default, which is different from other Vietnamese restaurants we have visited before.

Overall, Pho 45 serves up delicious tasting pho with high quality meat, but the spring rolls and vermicelli noodles did not really make the cut. Service and wait times are fairly quick, and the restaurant filled up really quick as well after we arrived. Most of the guests were Vietnamese as well, so you know that the food must be authentic. If you are craving for delicious pho near Anaheim, then you should definitely give Pho 45 a try.

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