Vietnamese on West Colonial: Phở, Hot Pot and Snails at the Edge of Chinatown
Regional range at Huong Viet, a vegetarian house at Phở TD and snail-house cooking at Mama Lau & Oc — the west side's Vietnamese table, cooking for its own community.
3 minute read
Orlando’s famous Vietnamese corridor runs along East Colonial through Mills 50 — but the west end of Colonial Drive, in Pine Hills, keeps a Vietnamese table of its own, clustered around Orlando Chinatown and cooking for the Vietnamese families who live on this side of the city. Phở, bún bò Huế, bánh xèo, hot pot and — the tell that a kitchen is cooking for its own — snails, prepared the Vietnamese way, with herbs and lemongrass and no apology. Here is the West Colonial run.
Huong Viet: the regional tour
Huong Viet, at 5286 W. Colonial Drive, describes its mission plainly: the culinary treasures of all three regions of Vietnam, on one menu. That means phở with a slow-simmered broth, bún bò Huế with its lemongrass-chili depth, and bún riêu — the tomato-and-crab noodle soup that Vietnamese regulars order by instinct and everyone else should try once. The kitchen’s own posts celebrate its bánh xèo hitting the pan — the turmeric crêpe folded over shrimp and bean sprouts, eaten wrapped in lettuce and herbs — and its bò lá lốt, beef grilled in betel leaf. A decade into its run by its own account, Huong Viet is the west side’s Vietnamese kitchen of record: family-friendly, unpretentious and cooking the dishes that do not survive translation into fast food.
Phở TD: the vegetarian welcome
Next door at 5282 W. Colonial Drive, Phở TD — Vietnamese Cuisine & Veggie House, formerly known as Cơm Bình Dân & Cơm Chay — does something rarer: a full Vietnamese menu with a serious vegetarian house inside it. Phở gà and the beef bowls anchor the conventional side, while the veggie kitchen answers a question Central Florida’s Vietnamese Buddhists and vegetarian diners ask often and hear answered seldom on this corridor. In a plaza district better known for barbecue and hot pot, a dedicated chay menu is a genuine distinction, and it makes Phở TD the group-dinner peacemaker of West Colonial: everyone at the table can eat properly.
Mama Lau & Oc: snails and hot pot
West of the plaza at 5038 W. Colonial Drive, Mama Lau & Oc — ốc means snails — is the specialist. The restaurant describes itself as authentic Vietnamese cuisine built around hot pot, seafood and phở, served family-style. The draw, by every account, is the snail cooking: escargot-style preparations, including snail with banana blossom salad, plus razor clams, grilled cockles and oysters with cheese — the drinking-food, sharing-food culture of Vietnamese seafood houses, transplanted to Colonial Drive. The phở đặc biệt holds up its end, and the sea-bass sour soup hot pot is the table-sized order for groups. This is a restaurant that assumes you came to linger and share, and it is the most distinctive Vietnamese dining room on the west side.
Inside the plaza, too
Do not overlook the plaza itself: Phở Saigon, inside Orlando Chinatown, has been noted in citywide phở roundups for its convenient Pine Hills location, and the plaza’s Vietnamese bakery and bánh mì options round out a crawl that can start with a bun at Sun Pearl and end with a bowl across the street. The full plaza walk is in our field guide to Orlando Chinatown.
Why the west side matters
It would be easy to treat West Colonial’s Vietnamese kitchens as overflow from the famous east-side corridor. That gets it backwards. These restaurants serve Pine Hills’ own Vietnamese community — one of the many that make this neighborhood what it is — and their menus show it: regional range at Huong Viet, a chay kitchen at Phở TD, snail-house cooking at Mama Lau. Put them on your Orlando Top Spots Map next to the Caribbean and Haitian corridors in our Where to Eat in Pine Hills roundup, and you have the real geography of Orlando eating: one road, many Vietnams, Jamaicas and Haitis, all within a mile.
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