Pho Bar drops easy Vietnamese eats into the Mills 50 mixer

It takes serious fried fish balls to break into Orlando’s Vietnamese food scene. It’s kind of our thing — the City Bánh-mì-full. Little Saigon is both its epicenter and increasingly competitive playing field, where Michelin mentions sit shoulder to shoulder with mom & pop mainstays. Between a pho bowl that runneth over and real estate headaches fostered by entrenched local landlords, the dynamic for aspiring restaurateurs in Mills 50 is, shall we say, bare-knuckle.

With this, Pho Bar has officially entered the ring. The indie chain from South Florida receives bonus chutzpah points for rhyming its brand with an acronym synonymous with disaster, even if we found the recently opened eatery on Colonial Drive far from FUBAR’ed. In fact, Pho Bar is polished, efficient and, on our first visit at noon on a Tuesday, filled up beyond all recognition.

Although it’s a table-order establishment, Pho Bar vibes fast-casual: flip-flops and T-shirts, photo-laden laminated menus, speedy, reasonable and easy. The freshly minted strip in which it resides affords its dining room a great deal of light; the semi-open kitchen clatters friendlily; the lofted ceiling invites diners to breathe — a recipe for relaxation that seems part of the plan.

That plan is the product of entrepreneur Minh Do, whose Pho Bar concept is spawning locations as far afield as Boston and manifests in a menu featuring dishes inspired by his family recipes. We’re not sure if his grandma mixed a mean gimlet, but on our first visit we were obliged to order one, paying tribute to the Bar in Pho Bar, and we bookended the impulse by ordering the house special phở ($16.50).

Special phở at Pho Bar means all the beefy bits, tripe to tendon, in a properly clear 24-hour broth heady with aromatics. It’s buoyed by delightfully slurpable house-made noodles that manage to remain simultaneously soft and toothsome. While enjoyable, neither depth of broth nor quantity or quality of protein and accoutrement served to separate the phở from area standard. A good standard, but standard.

Less standard were gently charred slices of grilled satay squid ($16), which were dipped into both a green chili and a gorgeous fresh ginger sauce. Equally enjoyed was a platter of pan-sizzled mussels ($13) with peanut and fried shallot, livened by the peppery punch of rau ram (Vietnamese coriander). Both were tasty and finished in a flash, but merely preludes to two of our top tastes.

Steamed rice cake ($15) is a popular Vietnamese street snack with reason — small saucers with rice cake set in the base, topped with minced pork belly and shrimp, crispy pork skin, fried shallot and scallion oil. Each bite was loosened with spiced nước chấm and slid from saucer to spoon to highly appreciative mouths. Although missing a classic topping or two, they’re a must. Likewise, grilled pork and noodles ($17.50) shone — a bowl of chopped pork shoulder, fragrant herbs and crisp vegetables, noodles, and moan-inducingly delicious fried spring rolls (designated “egg rolls” here). When tossed with nước chấm, it became a jumble of harmony and a bite I’ll return for. And I will return — there’s an undeniable gravity to Pho Bar’s across-the-board tastiness and simplicity.

In a past life, I would tell clients, “Fast, cheap or good — you can have two of the three.” Of course, this meant you get what you pay for. But the underlying implication was the closer you come to achieving all three, the more satisfied you will be with the results. Pho Bar approaches this sweet spot: an affordable, everyday easy-pleaser that puts it firmly in the mix for diners spoiled for choice in Mills 50.

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This article appears in Jul 23-29, 2025.