{"id":186532,"date":"2026-02-20T20:44:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T20:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/186532\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T20:44:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T20:44:07","slug":"sfs-most-legendary-chicken-pho-is-now-available-until-3-a-m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/186532\/","title":{"rendered":"SF\u2019s Most Legendary Chicken Ph\u1edf Is Now Available Until 3 a.m."},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re a serious ph\u1edf slurper in San Francisco, you\u2019re likely aware of Turtle Tower\u2019s rise and fall and, now, rise again. Probably the most famous and widely beloved ph\u1edf restaurant in San Francisco during its 25-year run, Turtle Tower operated four locations across the city at its peak. Regulars were understandably devastated, then, when the last location shut its doors in 2023 \u2014 and overjoyed when a new ownership group revived the business<\/a> with a sleek, well-appointed restaurant in the Financial District last spring. Then came the surprise news that Turtle Tower 2.0\u2019s second location would be in the Marina, of all places.<\/p>\n

\"Illustration:Turtle Tower\u2019s Marina location is open until 3 a.m. on weekends. (Thien Pham)<\/p>\n

Open for about a month now, the new Fillmore Street restaurant has the look and feel of a swanky fusion restaurant, with low-pulsing electronic dance music and an abundance of stylishly backlit tropical greenery. A chic black-and-gold mural of what appears to be the Imperial Citadel of Th\u0103ng Long spans the back wall. All in all, it\u2019s quite a makeover from the stripped-down, mom-and-pop vibe of the original Larkin Street restaurant, where I used to go for big weekend lunches with my family in the early aughts.<\/p>\n

The worry, of course, with the opening of a \u201cfancier\u201d Turtle Tower in a non-Asian neighborhood, is that the food is going to get whitewashed and watered down. Indeed, the first thing we noticed is that the menu didn\u2019t list the \u201cdeluxe\u201d version of the restaurant\u2019s famous chicken ph\u1edf (listed as \u201cph\u1edf g\u00e0 l\u00f2ng\u201d in the old days), which came with giblets and skin for a boost of texture and earthy oomph. When we asked our server about it, she smiled sheepishly and explained that, at least for now, they weren\u2019t offering that version. \u201cWe weren\u2019t sure if \u2018Marina people\u2019 would eat giblets,\u201d she said. Which is, well, fair enough. (She noted, though, that a lot of Asian customers had been asking for them.)<\/p>\n

Throughout our meal, there were other small signs of the \u201cMarina-fication\u201d of the restaurant: the (non-Asian) waitstaff\u2019s confusion when one of us asked for some vinegar to mix into his dipping sauce for the ph\u1edf meats. The fact that the ph\u1edf arrived with only a single lime wedge and the tiniest imaginable pile of sliced jalape\u00f1os. (Not-so-pro tip: You just have to ask for more.) And, no surprise, the ph\u1edf was priced about $5 higher than it was in the Tenderloin days, just a few years ago.<\/p>\n

But when we actually dug into the food, we put aside all our skepticism. We started with an order of the fresh spring rolls stuffed with both shrimp and thin slices of pork \u2014 very light and very delicious, in large part because of the smokiness of the grilled pork, which lingered in our mouths. We also ordered the house-made crab chips (a perfect snack under any circumstance) and a plate of \u201cHanoi\u201d-style chicken wings, which none of us remembered from any of the previous incarnations of Turtle Tower. These were whole, two-joint wings that we pulled apart with our hands, juicy and succulent, and fried to an attractive, crackly sheen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019re a serious ph\u1edf slurper in San Francisco, you\u2019re likely aware of Turtle Tower\u2019s rise and fall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":{"0":"post-186532","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-oakland","9":"tag-oakland-headlines","10":"tag-oakland-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}