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More and more Lehigh Valley restaurants are offering foods from a variety of ethnicities.
With the area becoming a real melting pot of multiple cultures many ethnic restaurants are finding the area to be an ideal location.
For instance, Pho Vung Tau Vietnamese Restaurant at 1500 Union Blvd. in Allentown enjoys being one of only a couple Vietnamese restaurants in the area. According to Vy Tran, niece of owners Se Tran and Hoa Nguyen, the family-owned restaurant uses recipes that have been passed down to her aunt through past generations.
"My uncle used to live in California, and he used to work in a Vietnamese restaurant there. When he moved to Allentown there weren't too many (Vietnamese) restaurants, and so he opened one," says Vy.
As the Lehigh Valley becomes increasingly diverse, restaurateurs such as Se Tran and Hoa Nguyen are finding wide acceptance for their ethnic foods. "It's a niche," remarks Gary Crivellaro, whose commercial Web site, www.MyAuntEdna.com, lists approximately 750 restaurants in the region. "Having unique food is an advantage as well."
While Crivellaro says he believes that Italian restaurants definitely predominate numerically in the Lehigh Valley, he adds that he is seeing more and more Indian, Chinese, and Greek-leaning restaurants.
At Pho Vung Tau, customers are from a variety of cultures including Americans, Indians and Hispanics.
Vy helps her cousin and aunt in the kitchen and at the front counter. "We have a small menu, but everybody likes something," she says.
They serve a variety of soups that Vy says are big enough for a meal, as well as different kinds of fried rice and vermicelli entrees.
Their vermicelli dishes are served in a bowl with vegetables in the bottom and then the noodles and then beef, chicken, seafood or Vietnamese egg rolls on top. This...