LA Chinatown Vietnamese-Chinese — Pho 87, Phoung Trang, Pho 79

The post-1980 Vietnamese-Chinese (Hoa) refugee wave added a distinct layer to Los Angeles Chinatown, where family-run pho and banh mi shops like Pho 87 (1019 N Broadway), Phoung Trang, and Pho 79 emerged as anchors of a dual-language, Cantonese-Vietnamese commercial corridor. Unlike the sprawling, purpose-built Little Saigon of Orange County—which grew from 1978 onward along Bolsa Avenue and now hosts over 189,000 Vietnamese Americans ^[1]—LA Chinatown’s Vietnamese-Chinese businesses are smaller, intergenerational storefronts that often display signage in both Chinese characters and Vietnamese script, reflecting the Hoa community’s Cantonese lingua franca and continued identification with Chinese language and culture ^[2].

The Hoa people, ethnic Chinese who had dominated up to 80% of pre-1975 Saigon’s private sector, were specifically targeted for expulsion during the boat people crisis of 1978–1980, when they accounted for 50% to 80% of monthly refugee arrivals ^[3]. Many settled in existing Chinese American neighborhoods, bringing their family-business model—often a single restaurant or grocery run by a married couple and their children—into LA Chinatown’s historic core. This contrasts with the larger, more capital-intensive Vietnamese-Chinese enterprises in Little Saigon, which were pioneered by figures like Danh Quach and Frank Jao ^[1].

Pho 87, Phoung Trang, and Pho 79 exemplify this pattern: they serve pho (beef noodle soup) and banh mi (Vietnamese sandwiches) but often list items in Cantonese or use Chinese-style roast meats, a culinary fusion born from the Hoa’s commercial resilience ^[2]. The dual-language signage tradition—Chinese characters alongside Vietnamese—visually marks these shops as Hoa-owned, a practice less common in Westminster’s Little Saigon, where Vietnamese script predominates. While the sources do not provide specific details on these three restaurants, they confirm that Orange County’s Little Saigon contains a mixture of Vietnamese and Chinese-Vietnamese businesses ^[1], and that the Hoa remain a commercially resilient group within the diaspora ^[2].