Pho Den: Peanut satay pho in Burnaby
I’m a mild kinda girl but lately I have been into spicy peanut satay pho 🥜. Surprisingly, this menu item can be challenging to find because I noticed a majority of local Vietnamese pho spots do not have a peanut satay broth.
Finally, I found a decent peanut satay pho at Pho Den in South Burnaby 😆! In addition to peanut satay pho, they have all the other classic Vietnamese dishes like beef pho, bun bo hue, spring rolls, vermicelli and rice plates. We like to come here for a quick and easy lunch or weeknight dinner and these are some of the items we’ve tried through multiple visits.
Pho Den
6401 Kingsway #120, Burnaby, BC V5E 1E1
The vibe
Pho Den is a pretty spacious restaurant with parking available in the back and street parking in the front. Every time we’ve eaten here, I find the spacious to be quite welcoming and more aesthetically pleasing than your casual pho spot. I also find the turtle logo quite cute 🐢.
They have large tables that can seat large groups but I find that even when we come just as a table for 2, we often get seated in the nice plushy booth seating!
Food and drinks review
Here are the usual things we order or have tried. Prices are in CAD and rounded to the nearest dollar for simplicity.
Viet nom nom ($10)
Usually when we eat here, we each order a bowl of noodles and split an appetizer so here is the first appetizer we tried at Pho Den – the Viet nom nom.
These are essentially deep fried pork balls with seasoning. I thought they tasted ok but a little bland – perhaps a sauce with it would spice it up.
Deep fried chicken wings ($15)
If you order the chicken wings, you can choose a flavour: black pepper, five spice or traditional fish sauce. We asked what the most popular flavour was and went with it – it was traditional fish sauce.
Every time we order chicken wings from a Vietnamese restaurant, we are always secretly hoping for wings that taste like Phnom Penh’s 🤞. Alas, this one did not taste like Pnom Penh’s famous wings, but it was still pretty good! The wings were fried well and crispy and savoury from the fish sauce.
Chicken nuggets ($11)
We are on a deep-fried train because all the appetizers we ever order from here are deep-fried. I don’t have a photo of it, but the deep fried spring rolls ($6 for 2) are tasty too and has a lot of ground pork in the filling.
The deep fried chicken nuggets came out better than I expected. First, the portion was quite a bit for $11 and the chunks of nugget meat were pretty large too. It is served with a homemade sweet chili sauce that helped boost its flavour.
Pho sate ($16)
This bowl of noodle soup is the reason why I come to Pho Den – the peanut satay pho 🤤!
As you can see in the photo, it is a very vibrant orange-y colour due to the peanut beef broth. It is creamy and spicy – the spice adds up but it is addictive 🥵!
The noodles are the usual thick rice noodles but I think what makes Pho Den good is their marinated rare beef slices. The meat is very tender and delicious – not tough at all like some other spots.
Pho chin, bo vien ($15)
This is usually my husband’s go-to order: beef brisket with beef balls. We are told the broths are cooked for over 24 hours so the broth is quite flavourful.
They just have a one-size here (no small or medium sizing) but one bowl is enough to fill my husband and I usually cannot finish my bowl of sate pho.
Den café ($7)
My husband also likes to order this Viet coffee, which is a stronger version of the regular Viet coffee. I am not really sure what makes it stronger, but it is still a sweet iced coffee with condensed milk.
Final thoughts
Loewe’s rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Pho Den delivers on what it promises – a casual and authentic Vietnamese restaurant with classic dishes.
I find the Vancouver scene to be pretty highly saturated when it comes to pho spots (you can find good pho for a cheap price at a lot of places across the Lower Mainland 🤷🏻♀️), and I believe Pho Den is up there on the list of easy and cheap meals when you crave something soupy.
Again, I highly recommend the peanut sate pho, as well as any pho noodles that have the marinated rare beef slices. I am not the biggest fan of beef/red meats but I like the beef slices from Pho Den – very tender 👍!
I like this peanut sate so much that I actually have never even tried any of their other dishes. I want to try the beef stew and if that is also above average, then I am happy to up Pho Den to 4 stars in my book.
Sincerely, Loewe