- Pho Ca Dao
- Cuisine: Vietnamese
- Neighborhood: City Heights
- 5223 El Cajon Blvd.
- San Diego, CA 92115 (Map)
- (619) 326-1420
Recommended by 1 local
One of your favorites, too?
Locals helping locals discover great dining in San Diego.
Explore the site. Check out our recommendations. When you're ready to contribute, please join us.
-
Located at the corner of El Cajon Boulevard and 52nd Street, near World Foods supermarket. Parking in supermarket lot. Nearest freeway access: I-8, Fairmount Ave. exit.
Transit & Parking Info
Hours of Operation 
Sun: 7am to 9pm
Mon: 7am to 9pm
Tue: 7am to 9pm
Wed: 7am to 9pm
Thu: 7am to 9pm
Fri: 7am to 9pm
Sat: 7am to 9pm-
Updated: 01/07/07
Here’s to !
Pho Ca Dao might seem confusing at first, but there’s nothing confusing about a steaming bowl of intense broth, tender noodles and flavorful beef.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed at Pho Ca Dao if you’re not used to how things are done at a Vietnamese noodle house. First of all, pho is something that people eat at every meal, so the restaurant can be quite crowded at any time of the day. Then there’s the menu. There are almost fifty entrees, and some of the items on the menu are inscrutable to the uninitiated. To wit, number 28, broken rice with fresh rind, steamed meatloaf; or number 13, rare steak and well done steak; or number 20 from the dessert menu, the mysterious “herbal drink.” There’s also the bill. The waiters don’t bring it to your table. Last but not least are the diacritics -- the little marks above and below the vowels. How does one pronounce them?
Have I scared you? If so, please allow me to unscare you. Eating at Pho Ca Dao isn’t as difficult as it might sound from the above description. In fact, the restaurant is full of tools, some obvious and some not so obvious, to help you order, eat and pay. And any confusion you might suffer is well worth it. The food is delicious.
First, the crowds: it’s true that at times the restaurant appears to be overflowing with people and you worry that you’ll never get a table. It’s an illusion. There are plenty of tables and there’s an army of waiters and busboys working fast to get you seated. Even at the most crowded times, the wait is short.
The menu: at first glance it seems impossibly extensive, but that long list of entrees really comprises only three dishes: noodle soup (pho), meat with rice (com tam) and meat with noodles (bún). The forty-eight items are merely slight variations of the three basic forms. For example, every kind of bún is a bowl of rice vermicelli with bean sprouts, cucumber and salad greens, with a small bowl of fish sauce on the side. The only difference among the eleven kinds of bún is the meat: beef, pork, shrimp or duck. They’re all good, but my favorite is the bún tôm thit nuong with sweet barbecued shrimp and pork. The smoky shrimp and pork pop out against the bland noodles.
The twenty-eight kinds of pho are similarly, um, similar. The basic framework of the dish, the star of the show at Pho Ca Dao, is beef broth and rice noodles. To that, you can add different cuts of (mostly) beef cooked to your preferred level of doneness. Pho also comes with a pile of bean sprouts, sliced hot peppers, lime and basil that you can augment your meal with. If you have any doubts, there’s a guide to the ingredients on the back of the menu.
As for the bill: in spite of the appearance of haste, they don’t want to rush you at Pho Ca Dao, so, as at other Vietnamese restaurants, the waiters don’t deliver your bill, that clear sign that your meal has come to an end. How do you pay, then? Look at your table. There’s a number on it. When you’re good and ready to leave, perhaps after a cold glass of soda chanh muoi (a salty and slightly ammoniac mixture of club soda and lemonade made with preserved lemons), or a sweet and bitter trà thái trân châu (Thai-style iced tea loaded with chewy tapioca balls), tell the cashier your table number, and he or she will give you your bill. Easy enough, right?
And what about the diacritics? I have to admit that this issue is a little more complicated. Vietnamese has six tones and ten vowels, each of which is represented by ... I’ll stop there. It’s rather confusing, and it doesn’t really matter. At Pho Ca Dao, all that matters is the food, and that’s not confusing at all.