Oct. 8, 2020

The pandemic has led to a new look, new menu items and technology – not new, just technology – for longtime Vietnamese restaurant Pho Quynh.

It also brought the family who operates it – Quang and Quynh Danh and their sons, Vinson, Tony and James – closer together.

“If there’s any takeaway from this whole situation, (it) is you realize what’s important and you realize how important it is to come together as community but (also) as family,” Vinson Danh said. “My brothers and I were all independent, we do different things, but when it comes down to it, this restaurant, it put my brothers through school, it put me through school, it does a lot, so we would hate to see it go.”

The dining room of the restaurant at 12th Street and Grange Avenue reopened last week, and customers will find new decor, including photographs Danh took in Vietnam and vibrant prints by a Vietnamese artist who lives in Southern California. A monitor suspended from the ceiling shows photographs of menu items, also taken by Danh.

While the restaurant served only takeout for six months, the family used the time the refresh the dining room and “join the 21st century,” adding a point of sales system for entering orders and running payments. Danh boosted its social media presence, added ordering through Facebook and later created a website for the restaurant where customers can see photographs of every dish and place orders.

“We knew from the get-go that to survive we’d have to do something different. … The restaurant community in Sioux Falls is pretty small, so you got to do something to make waves, and being friendly and being active socially on social media and other platforms helps a lot.”

Convincing their parents to make changes wasn’t easy, but the family has worked through it together, Danh said. The brothers are first-generation Americans. Quang and Quynh fled Vietnam and lived in California before moving to Sioux Falls in the 1990s. They have operated several restaurants here, opening Pho Quynh in 2007.

“My parents, especially my dad, he’s been kind of resistant to change over the years, but this past couple of months has really made him a little bit more open-minded in the sense that at one point, I remember him telling Tony and I, ‘Boys, do what you got to do. At this point, it’s either sink or swim, try whatever.’ That’s when we started doing the online ordering, that’s when we switched our credit card processor to be just a little more easy. And now that’s evolved to new things on the menu.”

Tony, who works in the kitchen with his mom, created pho nachos as a special last month, and now they’re a secret menu item that’s available every day.

After years of requests from customers, the brothers also convinced their mom to add banh mi, a traditional Vietnamese sandwich, to the offerings.

“My mom, she’s had so much extra free time that she learned how to make her own mayo, make her own pate, make her own cold cuts and all that kind of stuff,” Danh said.

Other new entrees include grilled shrimp skewers, a meatball dish and pineapple and seafood stir-fries.

Danh convinced his parents to let him create English names for dishes on the menu to make it easier for customers. He kept the Vietnamese words but as a secondary description “because I know that when the tickets get printed out, they’re going to be shouting that to each other to cook it so they know what it is.”

A few tables have been removed in the dining room now that it has reopened to help with social distancing. Each table has hand sanitizer and a QR code to access the menu online. Customers also can use paper takeout menus.

“One of my friends who’s ordered so much carryout over these last couple months, he came in on Friday, he sat down, and he said, ‘Nothing beats sitting down and eating it out of one of your bowls because at home it doesn’t feel the same.’ ”

The Danhs are hopeful that their changes will keep customers coming back.

“The verdict is still out on seeing how well it is, but we’re optimistic and very thankful for the community, very thankful for our regulars and new people who come in and try, and everything else.”