Pho Reading

Walk into Pho Reading on King Street and you're immediately hit with the smell of star anise and beef stock—the kind that tells you someone actually knows what they're doing. It's unpretentious stuff: steaming bowls of pho served at communal tables, the kind of place where your neighbours are slurping noodles as enthusiastically as you are. The space is functional rather than fussy, which somehow makes it feel more authentic. You come here for the food, not the Instagram backdrop, and that's precisely why people keep coming back. At around £8-12 a bowl, it's decent value for something this good, and the queue out the door most evenings proves Reading's got serious Vietnamese cravings to satisfy.