Local Favourite Budget Vietnamese Restaurant. Pho Tien Thanh @ Ossington Ave, Toronto

So I was enjoying my pho yesterday at Que Ling Vietnamese Cuisine in East Chinatown, sharing a table with a stranger. My new friend David suggested that I try the pho at Pho Tien Thanh at Ossington Avenue. "The best pho in Toronto" David said.



So, here we were at Pho Tien Thanh the very next day. It's a small unassuming but busy place, filling up quickly and at times queues form waiting to be seated.



We had a House Special Beef Noodle Soup large serving for CDN10.75++. Big pho lah 😄



It's a huge bowl filled with beef soup and generic dry type vermicelli noodle topped with generous amounts of rare beef slices, blanched beef brisket slices, tripe and tendon.



The beef soup was watery, mildly savoury sweet, quite smooth and not overly greasy. David said they use very little MSG. Yeah, I sense there wasn't too much MSG or sugar inside.



The blanched beef brisket slices with a thin strip of fat at the top were mildly beefy sweet (but weren't as tender or beefy as those at Que Ling).



The beef tendon was soft and gelatinous. It had a bit of beefy sweetness from the beef soup.



The best thing in the bowl was the rare beef which was cooked just by dunking in the hot soup. We can taste the rich beefy sweetness oozing out with every juicy bite.

So David was right, he said rare beef is the thing to get at Pho Tien Thanh.



We also had Bún bò Huế or Hue style pho for CDN11.50++.



It's the same beef soup spiked with fermented shrimp paste and a bit of hot sauce which added a little heat and spiciness to the broth.



Heel of round beef with visceral tendon. It was quite stiff, fibrously chewy and had very little beefiness and no sweetness. I actually like this cut of beef but only if the meat and tendon are stewed till soft tender and gelatinous (not here at Tien Thanh, though).



I like this boiled pig trotter as all the tissue - skin, fat, meat and tendon were fall-off-the-bone tender and juicy sweet.

There were also a couple of thick slices of supermarket type Vietnamese pork sausage. Tender savoury sweet.



Pork blood curd. Its texture is like tofu and tastes savoury in the pork blood curd kind of way.



Pho Tien Thanh does not make any in house sauces. They use only bottled sauces.

We paid CDN28 in total (tip and tax all in) for the two huge bowls of pho. Cash only place, they have an ATM inside.

What is Johor Kaki doing in Toronto? 👈 click



Restaurant name: Pho Tien Thanh
Address: 57 Ossington Ave, Toronto, ON M6J 2Y9
GPS: 43°38'43.8"N 79°25'09.3"W 🌐 43.645491, -79.419254
Tel: (416) 588-6997
Hours: 11:00am - 10:00pm

Non Halal



Date visited: 28 Jun 2019



In Toronto, you just can't talk about Pho Tien Thanh without mentioning Golden Turtle as the two pho places are just a few doors apart along Ossington Avenue. Many Torontonians agree that Pho Tien Thanh and Golden Turtle are the top two pho shops in Toronto. They just can't agree on which one is number 1. (I hope to try Golden Turtle soon.)

By the way, between Pho Tien Thanh and Que Ling (which isn't in any of those top 10 best whatever whatever listicles online), I still prefer Que Ling in East Chinatown.