In the past several months, Andrew Nguyen knows he hasn’t been the only one looking forward to the opening of his new restaurant.
As the restaurant’s opening has inched closer over the past several months of renovations, he said, he’s heard from plenty of eager people wondering when they could finally stop in for a bowl of pho and a boba tea.
On Friday, that day finally came. His new Mission restaurant and tea shop, Pho And My BesTea, celebrated its “soft” opening over the weekend.
Pho And My BesTea opened at 6102 Johnson Drive
- The restaurant and tea shop took over a space in downtown Mission, just off Johnson Drive and Beverly Avenue.
- Locally-owned Mission Fresh Fashion previously occupied that space for more than a decade before it closed in May 2023.
- Pho And My BesTea is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday.
Pho And My BesTea focuses on Vietnamese noodle dishes
At other restaurants, Nguyen said, it can be tempting to overextend and try to make the menu too vast. That’s not the case at his restaurant.
At Pho And My BesTea, he said, the menu focuses on getting the staples right. The restaurant offers “signature” bowls of pho with broth that’s made in-house, and five different proteins to pick from — beef, chicken, spicy beef, spicy seafood or a vegan option of tofu and vegetables.
“We just want to keep it simple — a good, healthy bowl of pho with good flavor,” he said. “Exactly how Vietnamese people would eat it.”
The restaurant’s boba tea menu is a bit more vast, with milk teas in flavors like Thai tea and creme brulee, and fruit teas and smoothies in flavors like strawberry and passionfruit.
Customers can add toppings to their teas, such as brown sugar or mango popping boba. In addition to tea, Pho And My BesTea’s drink menu also offers some coffee drinks like caramel macchiatos and ube lattes.
Though pho and boba tea are the “backbone” of the menu, Pho And My BesTea also offers some other items like banh mi sandwiches, spring rolls and “croffles” (a pastry hybrid of a croissant and a waffle).
“We’ve been perfecting the menu for the past two years,” he said. “We wanted to keep it simple and affordable.”
Nguyen wanted to fill a gap in the local market
Growing up, Nguyen said pho was a dish frequently enjoyed by him and his family. But throughout his time in Kansas City, he never quite found a Vietnamese restaurant whose pho hit the spot the same way that it had for him before.
By opening Pho And My BesTea, he’s excited to give customers in Mission a taste of Vietnamese culture.
It’s something new for the community, he said, and so far, they’ve responded enthusiastically.
“It’s a new chapter, a new adventure for me,” Nguyen said. “(People have said) ‘Hey, we’ve been waiting for this forever.’ It just gives you a very special feeling.”
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