Hanoi House is in a basement on St Marks Place, which is the first thing to know because a fair number of people walk past it. It is also the clearest example in Manhattan of Northern Vietnamese pho done properly, which is a different dish from the version most New Yorkers have eaten and is worth going down the stairs for.
There is no lunch here Monday to Friday and the happy hour runs at odd times on Friday afternoons and weekend late afternoons. Ask Karpo whether the room is open right now and whether you have landed inside the cheap window or outside it.
Pho bac is not pho with fewer garnishes
Northern pho — pho bac — is defined by restraint. The broth is clear rather than cloudy, peppery rather than sweet, and the bowl arrives with scallion and little else. There is no plate of basil and sprouts, and adding hoisin and sriracha to it would be a misunderstanding rather than a preference.
That sounds austere and the effect is the opposite. Because there is nothing added, everything in the bowl has to be right — the broth is the entire dish, and it is where a twenty-four-hour simmer is either evident or it is not. Here it is evident. The clarity is the point: a clear broth with real depth is considerably harder to produce than a cloudy one, because every shortcut shows.
The house bowl comes with filet mignon, brisket, oxtail, bone marrow and a crisp fried breadstick. Beef pho runs $26, with an extra marrow at $5. That is expensive for pho by any measure, and it is a substantially larger and more elaborate bowl than the price comparison implies.
The marrow and the breadstick
The marrow bone is the signature and it works as a mechanism rather than as a topping. You push the marrow out into the broth partway through the meal, and the fat enriches everything from that moment on — so the bowl you finish is a different, heavier dish than the bowl you started.
That progression is the most interesting thing about eating here and it is easy to miss if nobody explains it. Drink some broth first, clear and peppery, before you introduce the marrow. Otherwise you have skipped the first half of the dish.
The fried breadstick, quẩy, is for dipping. It goes soft in the broth and picks up the pepper, and it is the traditional accompaniment in Hanoi rather than an invention. Use it.
The happy hour is genuinely good and barely known
Happy hour runs Friday from 4:30 to 7pm and Saturday and Sunday from 3 to 5:30pm. That gets you $5 Bia Hoi lager, a $9 rotating IPA, $9 prosecco, an $11 classic spritz and $11 house cocktails.
Bia Hoi at $5 is the detail worth flagging. It is a light, fresh, low-alcohol draught beer that in Hanoi is sold on street corners for pennies and drunk on plastic stools in the late afternoon, and having it available in a Manhattan basement at that price is a small but real thing. It also happens to be exactly the right drink with peppery broth.
The weekend afternoon window is the most useful of the three, because it overlaps with the Saturday and Sunday lunch service and lets you have a proper meal with cheap drinks in the middle of the day.
There is no weekday lunch
Monday to Friday the room opens at 5:30pm. There is no daytime service during the week at all, which is the single most common reason people find the door shut.
Weekends are different: Saturday and Sunday both run a lunch from 11:30am to 3:30pm alongside the evening service. Saturday closes at 10:30pm and Sunday at 9:00pm; Friday runs to 10:30pm and the early part of the week ends at 9:30pm.
If you want the full version of a visit — lunch and the cheap Bia Hoi — Saturday or Sunday afternoon is the answer, and it is a considerably quieter time to be in a small basement than a Friday night.
The room and the street
It is small, low-ceilinged and dark, with tables close together and a compact bar. That works in its favour in the evening and makes it warm and loud at peak. There is not much space to wait, so a queue means standing on the stairs or on the pavement.
St Marks Place is one of the denser eating and drinking streets in Manhattan, which means the wait is easily absorbed elsewhere and the surrounding options after dinner are numerous. It also means the street outside is noisy and chaotic in a way the basement is not, which is part of the appeal of going down.
Reservations are worth making for a weekend evening. Midweek and weekend lunch generally take walk-ins without much trouble.
Practical notes
119 St Marks Place in the East Village, downstairs. Hours: 5:30 to 9:30pm Monday to Thursday, 5:30 to 10:30pm Friday, 11:30am to 3:30pm and 5:30 to 10:30pm Saturday, and 11:30am to 3:30pm and 5:30 to 9:00pm Sunday — there is no weekday lunch. Beef pho is $26 with marrow at $5 extra. The style is Northern, so no herb plate and no hoisin; push the marrow into the broth partway through and dip the fried breadstick. Happy hour is Friday 4:30 to 7pm and weekends 3 to 5:30pm, with $5 Bia Hoi. Book for weekend evenings; walk in otherwise.
Tags: #hanoihouse #bestvietnamesenyc #eastvillage #phobac #stmarksplace #vietnamesefood #nycrestaurants #northernvietnamese #biahoi #nycnoodles #newyorkfood #nycfoodguide #nyceats #happyhournyc
Please drink responsibly. Must be of legal drinking age.
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Ask Karpo first
There is no weekday lunch here and the cheap Bia Hoi window sits at awkward hours on three days of the week. Ask Karpo whether Hanoi House is open right now, whether you have landed inside happy hour, and what else along St Marks Place is worth a stop before or after you go down the stairs.
