Tucked Away: Pho Hai Tuyet

Off the beaten path, down that flight of stairs, or tucked behind some crappy façade in a strip mall, some restaurants are overlooked because of their weird locations. It’s almost like there’s a parallel universe of Milwaukee dining lurking just beyond the curtain of the conventional. Just because a restaurant isn’t on the East Side or in Bay View, though, doesn’t mean the food’s not worth tracking down. Case in point: Pho Hai Tuyet (3881 S. 27th St., 282-8041).

The South Side isn't exactly known for its culinary hotspots. (Unless we’re counting Leon's Frozen Custard.) But on the corner of 27th and Howard, right before you hit a gigantic Target and a slightly less gigantic Toys R Us, you'll find Pho Hai Tuyet, a Vietnamese restaurant with a menu full of classic Vietnamese dishes.

Sandwiched between a sub shop and a Supercuts in one of the area’s less attractive strip malls, Pho Hai is—to put it lightly—somewhat lacking in ambience. But it's not hard to trust a Vietnamese restaurant full of Vietnamese customers. It's a simple room with about 10 tables, and stocked with the usual hole-in-the-wall staples: kitchsy Vietnamese art, Christmas lights. and flat-screen TVs showing Vietnamese karaoke. But the pros outweigh the cons: The food is authentic, consistently tasty, plentiful, and cheap. Parking is easy to find, service is prompt, and it never gets too crowded. Take that, trendy East Side.

If Pho Hai has a must-try dish, it’s the pho. The most traditional (and famous) of all Vietnamese dishes, this beef broth soup is served with rice noodles. You can pick what kind of beef—flank, tripe, tendon, or steak—to put in the soup, and then you get a plate of fresh basil, lime, bean sprouts, and peppers to garnish it. The com suon nuong (charbroiled pork chops with steamed rice) is simple and familiar, and the goi cuon (spring rolls) is a light appetizer that won't spoil your appetite for pho or anything else you'd like to try during your pilgrimage to the South Side.