Good Pho sets Shawnee on its buns

Go ahead and call me a grump. But I think listening to a recording of “All I Want for Christmas Are My Two Front Teeth” four times during a one-hour meal is more than any one individual should ever have to endure.

Luckily, the food at Pho Good, the 18-month-old Vietnamese restaurant at 10703 Shawnee Mission Parkway, is so delicious that I was almost able to block out the 1948 holiday standard and all of the other holiday tunes on rotation in the brightly lit (and lavishly decorated) dining room of Pho Good, which is co-owned and managed by Peter Nguyen (who formerly operated Dragon Palace and Oriental Feast Chinese restaurants).

Nguyen took over a vacant Asian market venue near the Interstate 35 interchange to create an appealing 150-seat restaurant serving seven different pho noodle bowls, seven bun vermicelli dishes, five steamed rice choices and four fried-rice options.

Nguyen does not serve alcohol at his restaurant but does offer soft drinks, Vietnamese coffee drinks and a wide array of fruity bubble teas.

“I get some comments that the restaurant is very far west,” says Nguyen, who came to the United States as a teenager in 1979, “but I feel it’s a great location. It’s close to the highway, and we get a lot of traffic at night.”

Pho Good is open seven days a week: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday-Thursday and 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday.