When casual conversation turns to food and restaurants, it’s satisfying to have that cute-little-hole-in-the-wall-restaurant-with-great-prices tucked away in your hip pocket. Have you ever heard of …?

It has to be in a trendy but sketchy area (107 Avenue, 118 Avenue, Chinatown), visually non-descript, no website, a mom-and-pop’er with smiles but little English, an order-by-numbers menu … and really good food.

The listener texts him or herself with the restaurant name … doesn’t matter if they ever get there, they just want to tell the next person at the next party.

The King Noodle House Pho Hoang in Chinatown has long been my go-to for a big, delicious $10 meal-in-a-pho-bowl. (Pho is a spicy Vietnamese beef and noodle soup. Any decent pho shop makes its own, long-simmered pho broth from scratch.)

Now I have another.

The Pho Huong Mama Pizza answers all the above: A stone’s throw from the NAIT LRT crossing on 107 Avenue, a plain ol’sign in a plain’ol commercial strip. It’s actually above the norm, having been recently renovated. It’s basic, very clean with good ventilation. The food is terrific, the service efficient, the staff are friendly.

So an eatery combines pizza and pho — if that’s what the customer wants, why not? The Parkallen on 109 Street has pizza, Lebanese cuisine and a huge wine list.

We weren’t there for the pizza, we were there for the pho.

Specifically, Pho Huong’s satay beef noodle soup.

Rarely, even in Vietnamese households, do “satay” and “pho” come in the same sentence. Satay is primarily Indonesian, a rich ground-peanut sauce mixed with soy, lemongrass and what have you.

This satay, as word-of-mouth correctly has it, is even more creative.

The Pho Huong satay pho broth isn’t the standard brownish translucent broth. It’s deep red, much thicker than normal due to pureed tomato and pulverized peanut, flavoured up with garlic, chopped green onion, a generous dollop of good-quality sliced beef and, beneath it all, a one-third noodle base.

It’s tomato-garlicky delicious, the most unusual pho I’ve ever had. Now, writing about it, I want more!

Pho Huong’s green onion cakes deserve consideration for those “best of” lists. They’re sweet and oniony, a little smaller than a side plate, two to an order. They come straight from the kitchen — light, billowy and browned without lingering oiliness. The accompanying sweet chili sauce brings the sweet, sour and savoury into perfect balance.

We did turn to the Mama Pizza menu page for Pho Huong’s crispy chicken wings. Nothing Vietnamese here but an excellent batter and perfectly deep-fried wings — light and crunchy on the outside, beautifully hot and moist on the inside. They may be God’s gift to bad cholesterol and belly fat, but if the Devil makes these things, I am willingly Hell-bound!

Don’t go to Pho Huong for veggies – the Vietnamese side is pretty well all Pho beef noodle soups, Bun To vermicelli, chicken soups and rice plates.

Prices are fine, $8.50 for a large pho bowl, $5.95 for two green onion cakes. The wings are pricey at $1 each, but worth it!

Pho Huong is simple, friendly, clean, some must-try dishes, in-and-out in 40 minutes.

Make yourself look good! Tell your friends!

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Eating out notes

Just months after the successful debut of the Parlour Italian Kitchen, Century Hospitality’s new Hart’s Table + Bar has quietly opened in Riverbend, 23 Avenue and 142 Street … The entrance space of the split-level Sabor Divino (best seafood in town) has been transformed into the cosy and authentic Bodega Wine & Tapas Bar … Rumour has it The Keg will be an anchor tenant in John Day’s now-under-construction Rice-Howard Way office tower … Serving the Grandin LRT area, five minutes from the Legislature, is the District Coffee Co. at 10011-109 St. It’s Nate Box’s second venture after the Elm Café, in the Credo/Transcend artisan indie coffee-house style.