Di An Di means roughly let's go eat — the phrase you use with family rather than with guests — and the restaurant on Greenpoint Avenue has spent several years being described as the place that charges $20 for pho. That framing is doing the restaurant a disservice, but it is also the most interesting thing about it, because the price is the argument.
Weeknights here start at five and there is no lunch Monday to Thursday, which is the detail that decides whether the trip works. Ask Karpo whether the kitchen is serving right now and what else around Greenpoint Avenue is open at this hour.
What you are paying for
Pho runs around $20, entrees around $22, appetisers around $12. Those are Brooklyn restaurant prices rather than noodle-shop prices, and there is a version of the criticism that says Vietnamese food should not cost this and a version that says that expectation is itself the problem.
The second version is stronger. Vietnamese restaurants in American cities have been held to a price ceiling that comparable European cuisines never faced — nobody argues that a plate of handmade pasta should cost $12 because pasta is cheap to make. A kitchen that simmers broth for a day, makes its own components and pays Greenpoint rent has the same cost structure as any other kitchen doing that work.
Whether the food justifies it is a separate question and the answer here is broadly yes. This is carefully made food in a properly staffed room, not a counter operation with a markup.
The pho is Northern
The signature is Pho Thin, a northern Hanoi style, and the distinction matters because it determines what does and does not arrive at the table. Northern pho is cleaner and more peppery than the southern version, and it does not come with a plate of basil, sprouts and lime to add yourself.
If your reference point for pho is the southern style — richer, sweeter, with a herb plate and a squeeze bottle of hoisin — this will read as spare at first. It is not incomplete. The broth is meant to be tasted rather than adjusted, and the restraint is the tradition rather than an omission.
Pho Thin specifically involves beef that has been stir-fried with garlic before it goes into the bowl, which is a Hanoi variation and gives the meat a different character from the raw slices that cook in the broth in the standard version. It is worth ordering precisely because you will not find it in most places.
Order past the noodles
The short rib and the papaya salad are the two dishes that come up most often alongside the pho, and a table that orders only soup has missed most of the menu. The kitchen is led by executive chef Caroline Hahm and the restaurant is owned and run by first-generation Vietnamese-Americans, and the menu reflects a family's food rather than a survey of a cuisine.
The correct order for two is one pho, one entree and one salad or appetiser, shared. That is more interesting than a bowl each, costs about the same, and shows what the kitchen actually does. For four people, two pho and three or four other plates.
There is a full bar and the cocktail list is more considered than the format suggests, which matters because this is a restaurant you can have a proper dinner in rather than a noodle stop you pass through.
The hours are the trap
Monday to Thursday the room opens at 5pm. There is no lunch service on those days at all. Friday and Saturday run from noon to 10:30pm, and Sunday runs from noon to 10pm.
That five o'clock weekday open is the single most common reason people arrive to a closed door, particularly since Greenpoint is a neighbourhood people walk around during the day. If you want a bowl of pho at two on a Tuesday, this is not the place.
Reservations are not required but are encouraged for weekend evenings, and the room fills on Friday and Saturday. Midweek at six is comfortably walk-in territory.
Why Greenpoint
The location is worth a moment because it is not where New York's Vietnamese food has historically been. The established concentrations are in Sunset Park and in parts of Queens, and a modern Vietnamese restaurant in Greenpoint is aimed at a different room.
That is the substance of the argument about places like this. One reading is that it takes a cuisine out of its community and prices it for a wealthier neighbourhood. The other is that a first-generation Vietnamese-American family opening the restaurant they want to run, where they want to run it, is exactly what should happen and the objection carries an assumption nobody applies to other cuisines.
The practical position for anyone eating: go here, and also go to Sunset Park. They are different restaurants doing different things, both of them good, and treating one as the authentic version and the other as a compromise misreads both.
Practical notes
68 Greenpoint Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn; the G at Greenpoint Avenue is closest and the L plus a walk works from Williamsburg. Hours are 5pm to 10pm Monday to Thursday with no lunch, noon to 10:30pm Friday and Saturday, and noon to 10pm Sunday. Pho is around $20, entrees around $22 and appetisers around $12. The house pho is Pho Thin, a northern Hanoi style with stir-fried garlic beef and no herb plate. Order the short rib and papaya salad alongside rather than a bowl each. Reservations are encouraged for weekend evenings and unnecessary midweek.
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Ask Karpo first
There is no weekday lunch here and the kitchen does not open until five Monday to Thursday, which catches out most people walking around Greenpoint during the day. Ask Karpo whether Di An Di is serving right now, whether a weekend table needs booking tonight, and what else along Greenpoint Avenue is open if you have arrived too early.
