Pho Skyline has quickly become my favorite Vietnamese restaurant in Philadelphia. It is a small casual family and friends run business that can seat around 30 people and does a robust take-out business. Pho Skyline traces its origins to a friendship that began at the Viet Huong restaurant, in the Wing Phat Plaza on 11th and Washington. Vincent Tran and Kiet Trinh, and Trinh’s mother Nhan who most recently cooked at Hello Vietnam in Northern Liberties, initially launched an online catering company, Bet Viet Phila, and then opened Pho Skyline in February 2024.
The menu offers a selection of vegan dishes, including exceptional tofu summer rolls. Some of my favorite dishes are the Banh Mi Op La (this is a deconstructed Banh Mi with three sunny-side eggs, steamed pork roll slices, house mayo and pate served with an amazing crispy baguette) and the Mi Kho Tom Thit (a dry noodle dish with broth on the side for sipping, with pork slices, ground pork and shrimp over eggs noodles, with a house dressing sauce, bean sprouts, scallions, crunchy pork rind, and crispy chives).
The Dumplings: Pho Skyline serves Hoành Thánh Chiên, aka fried pork and shrimp wontons. They make these small dumplings fresh in-house and they are juicy, savory and have big chunks of shrimp mixed in with the pork. I did not particularly care for the thick, sweet orange dipping sauce – I think it was a variation on duck sauce. But there are bottles of slightly thick, deeply flavored soy sauce on each table, and this soy sauce goes perfectly with these dumplings. After my first bite into each dumpling, I drizzled some of this soy sauce into the dumpling. This combination of fried dumplings and soy sauce was very good.
Pho Skyline also sells the Vietnamese pyramid shaped rice flower dumpling. This style of dumpling has ground pork, usually with wood ear mushroom and a quail egg, embedded in a pyramid of gelatinous rice flower. The rice flower pyramid is wrapped in banana leaves, which impart a tea-like flavor to the rice flour when the dumpling is steamed cooked. I have tried this style of dumpling a couple of times and unfortunately I am not a fan.
The Location: Pho Skyline is in Philadelphia’s Italian Market on Christian street, just west of 9th street.
The search for the world's best dumplings 