Bernard Whitmore

Pho Sure
501 Shrewsbury Street, Worcester
(508) 425-3314

It was fifteen years ago that we visited the Wexford House, a perennial mainstay of Worcester dining. It impressed me at the time as a trainwreck of design. The dining room looked as if it had been assembled with materials from twenty trips to the ReStore, each visit yielding totally different wallboard, tile or paint colors. We enjoyed our meals at the Wex’, but the place felt claustrophobic and looked as if it had been hammered together by someone’s gnarly Uncle Fred.

Since that time, the owners of Shrewsbury’s Pho Sure purchased the long-shuttered Wexford house and decided to make some changes.

The new owners may as well have lobbed a nuclear device into the building’s interior, demolished everything, and started over again. In its place is a stripped down, uncluttered room of clean lines with large windows that overlook a vista of mostly open sky. The tops of trucks can be seen as they make their way down Belmont Street toward Shrewsbury, but the roar of traffic is mostly sealed out.

There’s a friendly, open vibe carefully orchestrated by the manager, Nikki Vo, who has personally engaged with our table each time I’ve dined there; she makes us feel welcome and is especially happy to assist anyone new to Vietnamese cuisine.

On a previous visit we’d raved about Pho Sure’s Double Fried Chicken Wings and I’d reorder them anytime. But this evening we decided to sample their Pot Stickers. It seems we order these dumplings wherever they’re offered, we especially enjoy them from the Harvest Moon on West Boylston Street. As much as we enjoy HM’s, I think I’d give the edge to Pho Sure.

Pho Sure’s pot stickers are elegant crescent-shaped dumplings, made from thin wrappers stuffed with a mixture of minced chicken and vegetables, then they were pan-fried on one side to achieve a light golden crispiness and served with tempura sauce. The overall experience is a textural balance of the delicate wrapper and fine-textured fillings accented with hints of still-crisp bits of vegetables. Perfect on their own, plunging them into the tempura sauce added another layer of umami-rich flavor.

Long after clearing our appetizer dishes, our server explained that an especially large number of customers picking up takeout meals caused a backlog in Pho Sure’s kitchen that evening. This increased the wait time for our entrée course to be significantly longer than reasonably expected. But as soon as my bowl of ramen noodles arrived, time ceased to matter.

Pho Sure’s Vietnamese Ramen Noodle Soup is a study in shades of green. The clear broth was heaped with deep-green stalks of choy sum, sliced shallots, sticks of zucchini and other leafy greens. I ordered mine with seafood, so it came with tender shrimp, slices of seafood cake and tubes of fancy-cut squid. Floating amidst all this was a half-hardboiled egg. The flavor of the broth was mild and tinged by the seafood. I mixed some chili sauce into the steaming-hot broth and dug into the bed of springy ramen noodles. I couldn’t imagine anything that will be more satisfying as we head into the cold autumn and winter seasons. 

And then I tasted the pho.

My bowl of delicate broth paled in comparison to my friend’s bowl of Beef Pho Noodle Soup. He ordered it with eye round steak and brisket. The broad portions of flavorful razor-thin sliced beef were joined by leafy cilantro, scallions and thin strands of onion floating over a thick layer of rice noodles. But it’s the pho that really excited us. The chef’s talent for building layers of rich flavors into such aromatic harmony is masterful. It’s a rich perfume of flavors that defies analysis and demands the simple pleasure of appreciation.

As I was leaving, I stopped to check out the huge aquarium of tropical fish, intrigued by their random movement and the optics of thick glass. Sensing an opportunity, Nikki Vo approached me and reminded me of how important it is to keep coming to Pho Sure. I readily agreed; I certainly want to try their Bahn Mi and fifteen other menu items that have piqued my interest. 

But I’ll never stray too far from their classic bowl of pho.