The Times
Jay Rayner prescribed a “steaming bowl of fragrant Vietnamese noodle soup” from this offshoot of a 24-year-old family business as the antidote to the coughs and hiccups of these “challenging times”.
The new venture, Jay said, is a tribute to late founder Lot Van Pham, whose ambition was to open a café with a short menu focused on pho – a “dish as cultural artefact, a marker of identity”. The broths are “pristine and limpid”, and come with “ivory threads of rice noodle” and slices of beef, tripe or tendon, or chicken, prawn or tofu.
There are “other great things” on the menu – prawn summer rolls, salt-and-pepper battered squid, whole barbecued quails, spicy bun bo hue soup, rice bowls – “but the pho really is the point”, perfect for over-worked, under-slept denizens of the nearby City.
Jay Rayner - 2026-02-15The Guardian
Grace Dent hailed the new canteen offshoot from a 25-year-old Vietnamese institution that serves “the best phở in town” – al-dente noodles in a “very meaningful broth”, topped with a choice of beef, beef balls, chicken, prawns or tofu.
“The big question with an institution such as the OG Sông Quê is: can you really recreate the magic elsewhere?” Grace’s answer is a firm Yes, although she has her doubts about its location on the “Spitalfields margins, in that sort-of-Aldgate and close-to-Shoreditch area”. Tom Brown’s Pearly Queen vanished pretty rapidly on the same site, and the venue was empty when she visited for Sunday lunch.
“This is one of those places where I say: use it or lose it. Right now, they have seats going, so take a friend, or a book, and settle down to the best phở in town… if you’re antisocial and like Vietnamese treats, well, right now, Sông Quê will feel like heaven.”
Grace Dent - 2026-02-22
