Chau Pham has always loved cooking. “He’s always been the first to volunteer to host parties; he’ll make an excuse for a party just so that he can cook and share his food,” laughs Viet Tram Tong, his wife of almost two decades. Both of their families have a history of food entrepreneurship: Tong’s parents owned Long Binh restaurant on South Federal Boulevard from 1988 to 1996, then opened Pho Van Noodle Souper before starting Huong Duyen, a Vietnamese beef meatball company that is now run by Tong’s brother.
Pham's father and uncles owned Vietnamese restaurants in Aurora and Greeley but didn’t open them until Pham was older, so he "wasn’t a restaurant kid," he notes. Despite their close connections to the food world, Tong and Pham went to CU Boulder for business administration and psychology, respectively, and spent fifteen years in mortgage lending — but opening a restaurant was always the dream.
In 2022, Pham started a catering business specializing in Asian dishes combined with Texas-style barbecue, such as fried rice with ribs or homemade bao buns with smoked brisket. His 150-gallon smoker filled the entire garage, and “he would haul home truckloads of wood and burn throughout the night. It was fun, it was delicious, but it wasn’t profitable,” remembers Tong. At the same time, the couple started developing and selling jars of homemade chile crisp, which they dubbed ChiliSmack. It did well, but still wasn’t the financial success they hoped for.
Undeterred, they continued to chase the dream. “We were going to open a food truck. We were shopping here and there, and then we figured like most food trucks, the end goal is to try a brick-and-mortar,” explains Pham.
“You can imagine our fears with a food truck living in Colorado, and the snow and the winters," Tong adds. "It didn’t make sense from the numbers, having a commissary, getting a parking space.” They almost signed the lease for a stall in a Lakewood food court, but that also fell through. Then they found their current space in a strip mall on Colorado Boulevard next to a Rockler Woodworking and Hardware. “It just kind of unraveled to be the best path. Everything fell into place. Not the catering, not the food truck, not a food court location. Like a restaurant, an actual place that we could build and customize the kitchen to our own,” Tong explains.
They sold their house in Arvada and moved with their four children to a smaller townhome closer to their restaurant. They used the money from the sale of their home to finance the buildout costs, but they were on a tight budget. “We put up this place pretty much ourselves, minus the floor. I mean, we actually ripped up the floor ourselves. We did the bench. ... We did the walls, we did the painting. The only thing we really didn’t do was the plumbing,” explains Pham. And by “we,” he means their four young children, too.
There were more than a few horror stories; it took seven months to get approved permits from Denver’s Planning and Development to start the work. There were miscommunications with subcontractors, and Tong vividly remembers needing to sand down their feature wall about a million times. “It was a pizza place, so they had a [chalkboard menu]. Every time they changed the prices, they would paint over," she notes. “Because we needed a smooth wall, we had to sand and then paint and sand and paint, sand and paint.”
ChiliSmack will be available at BòHeo.
BòHeo
The husband-and-wife team decided early to build their first restaurant around a simple menu with pho as the star. “Pho, being a staple to Asian cuisine, was the easiest course to introduce his name, BòHeo. And eventually, we hope to share more of his creative, mouthwatering dishes,” says Tong.
Aside from barbecue, Pham’s specialty is broth, which he's been developing since the couple got married two decades ago. “I make good broth. My broth is always clean,” he declares, describing the process as his form of therapy. “I sit there and stare at it, watch the bubbles come up. ... It’s kind of mesmerizing, and it shouldn’t go to a boil, because it breaks up the proteins and makes it really bland. I sit there and I baby it.”
For the regular pho broth, Pham eschews seasoning packages and instead buys and roasts every spice, then simmers the bone broth for 24 hours. The result falls firmly in the pho bac camp, the “traditional and original” pho from North Vietnam. It's known for its mild, clear broth, with aromatics such as star anise playing a more prominent role compared to that of pho nam, which is from South Vietnam and is known for its use of fish sauce, hoisin and abundant herb garnishes in the soup. Pho nam tends to be more commonplace in America.
So far, the most popular pho at BòHeo is the combination bowl with in-house roasted brisket, rare steak, flank, rare beef belly, tendon and tripe garnished with onions and cilantro and served with rice noodles. However, a real gem is the vegetarian pho, which uses carrots, radishes and herbs to produce a clear, satisfying, light, slightly sweet broth. It’s served with rice noodles topped with portobello caps, bok choy and fried tofu, and is a must-try, as you can't get it anywhere else.
Be sure to grab a Vietnamese coffee as well, which is made using a special blend of beans that took Tong a year to perfect.
This is a true family-run restaurant. There’s a popular saying that it’s not an authentic mom-and-pop Asian restaurant unless you see the owner’s kid at a table doing their homework. When we stopped by, Tong and Pham’s daughter was there, using her iPad and snacking on spring rolls. Tong works the front of the house while Pham and his brother run the kitchen. Pham’s father stops by almost daily to offer free handyman services, and the restaurant typically has a few tables of family friends or regulars who have become friends.
“Chau is very humble. ... His passion is the root of our story," says Tong. "Any dish he prepares will be done in various ways until he achieves the desired results. His pho recipe is no exception. Over time, through much trial and error, a homemade pho experience has always been the goal. We're learning with the restaurant business. It's challenging. You can't make everybody happy, but we're going to try our best.”
BòHeo Pho Kitchen is located at 2553 South Colorado Boulevard and is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday and Wednesday through Saturday. For more information, visit boheorestaurant.com.
