Restaurant Chu

A decent stop for Vietnamese food in Rockridge, but certainly not at the top of my list. If you travel a few miles out to Lake Merritt, East Oakland, or Chinatown, you'll build a list of high quality, authentic pho and vermicelli. The options here are plenty, but the quality of the food is not as rich. The staff lacks the experience and knowledge for simple asks such as cooking bean sprouts (a typical ask at a local pho shop), but the friendliness more than makes up for this. I order the seafood pho and fried shrimp appetizer, my wife gets the chicken vermicelli, and friends often get the beef pho.

Honestly love this place. Food is great, lots of GF and vegetarian/vegan options without compromising any flavor. Definitely try for the mini bao appetizers with your choice of protein (personally love that they have vegan chicken/vegan beef). Best part, the staff. Super friendly and attentive. They held conversations with some patrons but never left anyone waiting for service. One person even spent a little time giving us pointers on how to properly reheat a soup and how to order things if we expect to take some to go. Highly recommend.

The menu has more than expected, definitely something for everyone, including lots of vegan options! The food was delicious. There was only 1 server, 1 busser and 1 bartender for the entire restaurant which created an uneasy service experience. I was empathetic for our server as that was a lot of pressure for one person to serve everyone, however, she was fairly rude about it. Not sure if another server called out last minute or if this is how the business is run but it didn't seem fair to the service staff. Would definitely go back and hope the server is in a better mood and has better support, because the food was worth eating again.

Some of the best pho I’ve had in the Bay Area. Their broth has all the right spices (if not slightly light for my taste) and they offer a generous portion of basil and mint, a rarity in this area. I’m a full-blown meat eater, but also had the opportunity to try their vegan pho; it was actually really good and made from mushrooms I think.