Fast As Pho Brings Fast-Casual Vietnamese Concept to Littleton
LITTLETON, CO — A locally owned restaurant in Littleton is putting a different spin on the traditional fast-food model by pairing quick service with Vietnamese dishes that can take hours to prepare behind the scenes.
Fast as Pho Exterior | Photo by Ashton Acree (Local Developing Denver Collaborator)
Fast As Pho opened earlier this year at 10161 W. Bowles Avenue, near the intersection of Bowles Avenue and Kipling Parkway. The restaurant serves pho, noodle and rice bowls, banh mi, appetizers and boba through a concept designed to pair traditional preparation methods with the convenience of a quick-service restaurant.
The restaurant was founded by Tan Ngo, who brings an engineering background to the business. According to Fast As Pho, that experience helped shape a kitchen designed around consistency and efficiency while maintaining many of the slower preparation methods behind Vietnamese cuisine.
That distinction is particularly important when it comes to the restaurant’s namesake dish. Fast As Pho says its beef and vegan pho broths are prepared in-house and simmered overnight for more than 12 hours rather than being made from powders or concentrates.
The restaurant takes a similar approach to its banh mi, with baguettes baked fresh each morning and sandwiches prepared with house-made pickles and seasoned meats. The broader menu includes several varieties of pho, grilled beef, pork and chicken bowls, bulgogi, spring rolls, dumplings, egg rolls and boba drinks, with several gluten-free and vegan options available.
Despite the name, the idea isn’t necessarily to make pho itself faster. Instead, much of the time-intensive preparation happens behind the scenes, allowing customers to get food relatively quickly once they order.
Fast As Pho is a local, family-owned business, with its first location in Littleton. The restaurant includes dine-in service along with a drive-thru, giving the concept another feature more commonly associated with conventional fast-food restaurants than a neighborhood pho shop.
As part of a local collaboration with Developing Denver, Ashton Acree recently stopped by the Littleton location to check out the concept and try several items from the menu, and came away impressed with the food.
For Fast As Pho, the Littleton restaurant provides an early test of whether a more streamlined model can bring scratch-made Vietnamese food into the fast-casual category without eliminating the preparation that goes into it.
Fast As Pho is now open daily at 10161 W. Bowles Ave. in Littleton, near Bowles and Kipling.
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