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Owner Dominic Pham cooking in Pho Luca. (Photo by Stephanie Ganz)
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Pho Luca specializes in beef and chicken pho, spring rolls and offer vegetarian options. (Photo by Stephanie Ganz)
At 63 years old, Dominic Pham should probably be thinking about retirement. But that’s the last thing on the Vietnamese-born Pham's mind. Instead, he’s opening a restaurant with his wife, Nga “Lucie” Nguyen. Pho Luca, a play on Lucie’s nickname, debuts today, Dec. 6, at 2915 W. Cary St. Since 2016, the Carytown storefront has been a bit of a carousel, housing Curry Craft, Best Friends Forever and Hai Y’all. Pham hopes to change that.
When I ask Pham what brought him to Richmond from Houston, I quickly realize that his story is a long, meandering one. We take a seat at one of the numbered tables along the banquet as Pham spins his yarn and Nguyen makes an iced Vietnamese coffee. Dark, rich and sweet with condensed milk, I savor it as Pham tells me that Nguyen was once a film actress, starring in a Vietnamese feature film in the ‘70s, before eventually moving to Hong Kong to pursue cosmetology. She works wordlessly at the bar, listening with one ear while readying the eight-seat bar for their forthcoming grand opening,
This is Pham’s second pho-focused restaurant, having opened a previous venture, Pho Vet Dem, in Houston in 2006. For Pham, who had never set foot on the East Coast until 2015, something about Richmond simply felt like home.
Since leaving Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975, Pham has worn many hats — first, that of a cowboy while serving as a ranch hand in Dallas, then scrubs as a surgical technologist in California upon graduation from UCLA. He eventually found work as a fashion photographer after earning a degree in photography, and recently enjoyed a moment of fame as the host of a Vietnamese cable show about the art of feng shui.
In 2006, Pham received a call from his younger brother, Huong, to say he was opening a restaurant. Pham’s response was blunt. “I said, ‘What in the hell do you want to do that for, you don’t know how to cook!’ And he said, ‘Well you do!' "
Pham had once again found a new career. The brothers poured their hearts and family recipes into opening Pho Ve Dem, which roughly translates to “noodles by night.” It quickly became one of the top-rated Vietnamese restaurants in Houston before they sold it a few years ago. It remains open under new ownership and is considered a late-night spot for locals in the Little Saigon neighborhood.
The menu at Pho Luca is concise: chicken or beef pho, spring rolls and a few vegan and vegetarian options, with prices ranging from $6 to $12 that are compatible with other area Vietnamese restaurants. But Pham notes that he’s here to do his own thing. “We’re not here to compete with anybody,” he says. “I don’t believe in competition, I believe in helping people.”
As I finish the last sip of my iced beverage, Pham shares a lesson that resonated strongly with him at UCLA: “If you open a business to make money, you lose, but if you open a business to serve, you win."
Enthusiastic and infectiously earnest, Pham is a born storyteller, with enough material to last a lifetime. Maybe that will be his next occupation, something to take him into his seventies, as he is simply not the kind of person to ever stop working.
Pho Luca is open from 11 a.m. to midnight daily.
