313 South San Mateo Drive, San Mateo CA 94401
(650) 477-2524
Parking: street parking and paid parking lot nearby
Hours: Wed-Thurs 4pm-8:30pm, Fri-Sun 11:30am-9pm, Closed Mon & Tues
Last Visited: June 12, 2021
Food: 3 to 4 stars
Atmosphere: 3 to 4 stars
Service: 3 stars
Price: $$ to $$$
Gao Viet Kitchen is a sister restaurant to local favorite, Ben Tre. They offer a diverse menu that has elevated typical Vietnamese dishes that you might find at a pho restaurant like chubby pho (made of 24 hour beef bone marrow broth and filet mignon) and the Phozilla (pho with oxtail, a big beef rib, and available with giant freshwater prawns or a 1.5 pound Maine lobster) while also bringing street favorites like banh cuon (rice noodles rolls filled with pork, mushroom, and more) and banh knot (savory pancakes topped with shrimp), and banh beo (savory steamed rice cake with toppings) to the Peninsula audience.
Vietnamese art lines the stairway and tributes to the family members like grandma and her photograph line the other walls.
Limited seating is available indoors and ample seating is available outside in the converted parking area that is lined with wood shutters to provide some privacy. To avoid the crowds, come right when they open or off hours. Menus are available via the QR code on the table and they are quite thorough with cleaning between patrons.
Much of the food portions lean large as the experience feels like a decadent version of what you might normally get from their sister restaurant and those like them.
- Pork Belly starter - Banh Hoi noodles (rice noodles that are folded into individual rectangles/bundles) serve as the bed for chunks of roasted pork belly and served with pickled carrots and turnip and a lemongrass pork au jus dripping sauce. First, the pork belly was roasted nicely and there was sufficient flavoring, but the kicker is the sauce. Add the sauce to the noodles and the meat and it just takes the experience up a notch with the tartness of the lemongrass. I couldn't eat the meat and noodles on their own without the sauce for the remainder of the meal. The skin of the roast pork was unfortunately, not very crispy and actually a bit chewy. If you look at the menu photo and compare it with what you see here, you'll notice the pork belly sliced quite differently - chunks in reality and fanned out neatly in slices on the menu. Fortunately, this didn't affect the flavor, but the lack of crispy skin was a miss. The noodles take on the flavor of the sauce so all in all, just ok. I would probably go to my favorite Chinese BBQ shop for the pork belly in the future and make some rice noodles at home. $14.95
- The Big Gao Pho - This large bowl of pho contains a full beef rib, marrow, rare beef, 24 hour beef broth, grilled onion, and lots of spring onion. This bowl is enough to share if you're not a big eater and the beef rib is definitely meaty. The broth is rich and fatty from the marrow. By the time the bowl reached the table, the rare beef was not rare anymore, but all the meat was welcome. The marrow gets lost in the soup, but I still enjoyed the overall experience. If you're trying to eat light, this is not the dish for you and you probably wouldn't want to drink all of the broth like you might with a regular bowl of soup noodles. There was also a LOT of noodles - almost as much as if you were to order a regular pho with an extra serving of rice noodles. Tasty. $26
Service when they're with you is great, but it does take a bit of time to get someone to come take an order or to be checked on since the restaurant got packed not long after opening and there are many people ordering takeout. In summary, I will probably come back to try out other menu items like the street dishes and likely would skip the pork belly.
313 South San Mateo Drive, San Mateo CA 94401
