The Sisters Behind Seattle’s Phở Bạc Are Bringing Dinner Parties to the Page

If you’ve ever wanted an invite to one of Seattle’s best home dinner parties, Yenvy and Quynh-Vy Pham are delivering the next best thing.

Their parents opened what would become Phở Bạc in Seattle’s Little Saigon neighborhood in 1982, and the sisters are now the force behind the iconic Seattle restaurant and other family ventures, including Hello Em and Phởcific Standard Time. The James Beard-finalists have built a legacy on incredible Vietnamese food, drink, and hospitality. Now, with their new book, Phởnomenal Nights, they’re taking you out of their dining rooms and straight into their home kitchen.

Readers get a look at how the sisters cook, entertain, and unwind. Built around the art of hosting, the book breaks down party menus by vibe and category. You’ll find indulgent dips and apps, hand-folded phở dumplings, comforting one-pot dishes, and inventive mashups like lamb khố pot pies or salmon spring rolls. Add in a round of pandan-infused dry martinis or refreshing lychee pop spritzes, and you have a roadmap to throwing effortless, buzzy gatherings.

To make replicating their recipes as seamless as possible, the sisters break down dishes by difficulty level and share their go-to brands for key pantry staples. Whether you’re throwing an intricate, multi-course feast or a breezy, casual weeknight gathering, Phởnomenal Nights is an invitation to bring people together over food and drinks.

Sisters Yenvy (left) and Quynh-Vy Pham.

Photo by Dina Avila / courtesy of Blue Star Press

What was the timeline and inspiration for this cookbook?

Yenvy: We were tricked into it! Our senior editor at Sasquatch, Jill, was so persistent. She emailed every month for about eight months until we finally agreed to meet. When she suggested a pho book, we said, “No, that’s boring; there are so many of those already.” Instead, we decided to base it on the things we actually make at home—it’s essentially a dinner party book because we throw a lot of dinner parties. But then came the daunting reality of how much work it takes to write 80-plus recipes.

Quynh-Vy: And Yenvy really took the brunt of the food section. We divided and conquered between food and drinks, but her workload was easily double mine since I only handled the cocktails. We normally just gravitate toward what we’re good at, and thankfully we’re night and day.

How do you two divide responsibilities when running your restaurants?

Quynh-Vy: We jump into whatever is needed. I’m mostly at the downtown location managing the bar, while Yenvy watches over the soup shop and The Boat (another of the family’s restaurants). Yenvy handles all the creative food aspects, and I do the drinks.

Pandan-infused dry martini

Photo by Dina Avila / courtesy of Blue Star Press

Yenvy: But Quynh definitely has a higher standard than I do—she has to approve everything I make!

Quynh-Vy: I’m terrible with employees and staff, and Yenvy is really good with that. We’re very, very scrappy. We try to fix things ourselves before we ever call anybody.

A lot of Asian chefs and home cooks tell me they rarely write recipes down—they’re usually passed down orally. How was the transition to putting them on paper for a cookbook?

Yenvy: Running a restaurant means creating systems where everything is weighed out precisely, so we had that experience. But writing a cookbook was hard because our home recipes aren’t documented. Plus, testing 80-plus recipes in miniature home-cook portions was a challenge—I’m so used to mass volume. A lot of these are dishes we already make for dinner parties, so we just had to fine-tune them, make them approachable, and add some creative flair.

Quynh-Vy: When we submitted our first drafts to our editor, she told us, “You need to be much more specific.” We took a lot for granted, like assuming everyone knows what it means to “caramelize” something or where to find specific brands of ingredients. She reminded us that the book is for a national audience—someone in the Midwest needs to know what we’re talking about and where to find the ingredients. That was definitely the most daunting part.

Vietchetta, a Vietnamese-inspired take on Italian porchetta, seasoned with coriander.

Photo by Dina Avila / courtesy of Blue Star Press

Were there any recipes that proved to be unexpectedly difficult to explain on the page?

Yenvy: The vietchetta was really hard to write down. I forgot to mention in the initial draft not to bring the brine to a boil—you just heat it until the sugar melts so it cools down fast enough. People testing [the recipe] told me it took forever to cool down, and I thought, Oh no, I left out a crucial step!

Was there an emotional journey in preserving these family recipes and making them into a permanent artifact?

Quynh-Vy: I don’t think it fully dawned on us while we were writing it. We didn’t want a traditional book because those already exist. We wanted to show people that you can deviate from traditional meals. Every Vietnamese family eats certain classic dishes the exact same way. We wanted to take those familiar dishes and add a twist—like adding fresh herbs, pineapple, or unexpected elements—to give them a brand-new take.

Pork dumplings

Photo by Dina Avila / courtesy of Blue Star Press

Did you test a lot of the recipes by hosting dinner parties? 

Yenvy: It wasn’t even about throwing formal events; it was just like, “People are coming over on a Thursday, I’m cooking this.” It gave us a great opportunity to test things and see people’s reactions in real time.

Quynh-Vy: For example, when my house was finished being built, I threw a 45-person housewarming party and wrangled Yenvy into cooking. Coincidentally, it was right when we were testing all the pot pie recipes for the book, so she made about 10 different pot pies for the table and we had everyone vote on their favorites.