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When Allyson Tran opened her first pho joint, Vina Pho & Grill, in Edgewater in 2009, she’d really been looking for a spot in Boulder.
“I always wanted to go to Boulder,” she says. “My first plan was to open there, but we couldn’t find a location.”
Now she’s finally had a chance to make good on her goal, opening a second outpost of Vina at 1630 30th Street in the Peoples’ Republic.
Tran, who hails from Saigon but has been in the States since the mid-’70s, comes from a family that has always owned restaurants, including an eatery in Denver over two decades ago. “I’ve been working in restaurants since I was fourteen,” she says.
When she decided to open her own place, she built a menu of pho, bún chả and cóm. And in Boulder, she expanded that menu, too. “It’s the same idea as the Edgewater location, only more,” she says. “Especially more vegetarian.”
Now that she has two restaurants open, Tran says she may continue to expand — but only if she finds another great location.
The Boulder spot opened in January. For more information, call 303-444-1809.
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