Vietnamese Restaurants Feud Over the Name “Pho 21”

The Vietnamese, once again, go to war.

Photo Credit: Chloeqpan

January 24, 2021

By: Victor Tran

HOUSTON –  Three restaurants in Houston, Texas are battling over the name “Pho 21”. All three companies claim the legal right to keep their name.

One Pho 21 claims the right to keep the name because they were established first. ‘Out of all the pho restaurants, we were FIRST to be TWENTY-FIRST”, says the owner. “Our family has been selling pho under this name for generations in America.”

The second Pho 21 refutes that claim. They argue, “How could there be Pho 21 for generations? Vietnamese people have only been here for one generation!” 

Both Pho 21 restaurants claim the other’s soup tastes like “dirty dishwater”. An expert witness was hired to settle this in court. Flown in from Ho Chi Minh City, the witness was made to taste both restaurant’s pho, along with both restaurant’s dirty dishwater. Disappointingly, the expert could not testify, as he died shortly after.

Interestingly, the third and final Pho 21 has a sound path to retain the name. “We actually only sell spaghetti”, says the third owner, who argues their name should not matter, since they provide an entirely different product. So why keep “Pho” in the restaurant name? “Spaghetti is like Italian Pho, if you think about it”, says the owner. The other Pho 21s decline to comment.

In the later stages of the lawsuit, alternative names may be suggested in mediation. Examples include: Pho 21 #2, Pho 21.1, Pho 7×3, Beef Noodle Soup 21, Fuh 21,  Pho After 20 But Before 22, and (for the spaghetti restaurant) Pho-Getta-Bout-It. 

Regardless of the outcome, the three restaurants settled on one thing: they will not be using a pho pun in their restaurant’s name. “There’s too many of those already”, all three Pho 21 owners unanimously agreed.