Tofu before noon

Pho 79

The perfect breakfast is hard to find. Soul food is too fattening, diner food too bland, Japanese pickles just too weird before noon. If you like noodles, you might think Pho 79 serves the perfect breakfast, light, tasty and just exotic enough, inexpensive and filled with vitamins: beef soup. The strong, dark-roasted coffee, dripped at table in individual stainless-steel French filters, is among the best I've had anywhere. And in an area - Chinatown - thick with Vietnamese noodle shops, Pho 79 serves the best noodles. Of course, the place does have a few drawbacks: On weekend mornings, you may have to wait for as long as five minutes. Plus, it hasn't changed its one Vietnamese easy-listening tape since it opened a few years ago, and if you go every week, you get to know the songs pretty well - maybe too well. 727 N. Broadway, Suite 120, Chinatown; (213) 625-7026. Open seven days 8:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Lunch or dinner for two, food only, $7-$10. Beer and wine. Validated parking. Cash only.

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Category: Restaurant > Vietnamese

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533 W. Valley Blvd.
San Gabriel, CA 91776

Category: Restaurant > Asian

Region: Monterey Park/ Alhambra/ S. Gabriel

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Yung Ho Tou Chiang

At Yung Ho's, the breakfast protocol is easy. You order some soy milk, then some stuff to go along with the soy milk: flaky buns stuffed with sweet, simmered turnips; steamed buns filled with spiced pork or black mushrooms; crusty fried pied[s]??? stuffed with pungent messes of sauteed leek tops; small steamed pork dumplings bursting with juice. The sweetish soy milk itself is a resolutely bland, non-exotic substance; paired with dumplings, however, its flavor opens up, tempering the richness of simmered stuffings and the greasiness of fried ones. The traditional accompaniment to soy milk is a long, twisted, light-as-air cruller, and Yung Ho does them well. For another buck or so, you can get the cruller smeared with a salty paste of pounded meat and wrapped inside a cylinder of sticky rice, simulating the texture of good sushi roll. 533 W. Valley Blvd., San Gabriel; (818) 570-0860. Open daily 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Breakfast for two, food only, $5-$10. Beer. Takeout. Lot parking. Cash only.

-J.G.