Pho Wheels, a kiosk and food truck business serving Vietnamese street food, will celebrate the opening of its first brick-and-mortar restaurant in Burtonsville Crossing on Friday, the restaurant said Tuesday in a social media post.
In a video posted to social media, owner Tuan Vo stood on top of a Pho Wheels food truck decorated with black-and-white graffiti and illustrations to announce that the celebration will include a live DJ, line dancing, a ribbon cutting and giveaways of hoodies. Vo is a longtime Montgomery County resident and a 2007 graduate from Silver Spring’s Springbrook High School.
“Hey, Pho Wheelers! It’s the moment we’ve been waiting for, it’s the grand opening coming this Good Friday,” Vo said. “Come pull up from 12 p.m. to whenever, baby!”
Vo could not be reached for comment Thursday afternoon on the grand opening.
The nearly 1,700-square-foot restaurant at 15707 Old Columbia Pike is in a shopping center that is also home to Sprouts Farmers Market, Eggspectation, Isaac’s Poultry Market, Moby Dick House of Kabob and Playa Bowls.
Inside the restaurant, all of the walls are covered in a black-and-white mural by Rockville artist Henley J Bounkhong, who goes by the alias of Golden Rabbit Silent Monkey. The mural includes the eatery’s origin story from its beginnings as a food truck, motifs that allude to the Washington, D.C., area and a plethora of cartoon characters including Lilo and Stitch, Sailor Moon, Scooby Doo and the Simpsons.
According to his website, Bounkhong also has drawn murals for two other county restaurants: Akira Izakaya and Little Dipper Hot Pot, both in Rockville.
The new brick-and-mortar location will offer more space for Pho Wheels, which operates at kiosks in Arlington’s Crystal City Water Park development and at Union Market in the District. The restaurant also operates out of a food truck that makes stops around the region and serves food at events.
In addition to such authentic Vietnamese dishes as pho and bahn mi sandwiches, the eatery offers fusion dishes that Vo describes as “not your ordinary Vietnamese food,” including Bo-khirria tacos stuffed with cheese and Vietnamese beef stew consommé, oxtail cheesesteak banh mi and oxtail pho tacos.
The Burtonsville location also will offer breakfast and brunch options, Vo told Bethesda Today in February.
“It’s a lot more space, so we get to do a lot more here,” Vo said.
The space was originally a Starbucks with a drive-thru. He said he plans to incorporate the drive-thru into his restaurant, drawing inspiration from a drive-thru Vietnamese restaurant he visited while in California.
“A Vietnamese casual drive-thru is unheard of around here. It’s going to be so cool having that and being the first one to do it” in the D.C., Maryland and Virginia region, Vo said.
Aside from the drive-thru, diners at the Burtonsville restaurant will be able to eat indoors and at an outdoor patio, according to Vo.
In 2017, Vo took over the Pho Wheels business from the previous owner, Huy Nguyen, after being a customer and fan of the food truck for years, he said.
“I wanted to show all the support to him because he was doing something for the Vietnamese community [that] is just so different, you know, innovative and putting Vietnamese food on the map,” Vo said.
In February, Vo said he hoped the Burtonsville restaurant would have a “mom-and-pop” feel, noting that he is dedicating the restaurant to his father, who died in 2023. His mother will be one of the chefs in the kitchen. In addition, Vo’s wife, Jennifer Alcazar, helps with the business’s administrative work. Vo credits her for pushing him to pursue the Burtonsville location and fulfill his entrepreneurial dream.
