Postcards From The Pandemic: Superior Pho Struggles With Restaurant Changes

When Superior Pho opened in 2002, the Vietnamese restaurant faced competition from another pho restaurant with a more prominent storefront next door on Superior Avenue in Cleveland's Asiatown neighborhood.

But the restaurant's owner, Mahn Nguyen, slowly grew his small shop inside a mini-mall and eventually business improved to the point that he could expand into the space next door.

Now, the space is largely empty and the Vietnamese restaurant is struggling with growing costs due to the pandemic.

“And, you know, the trade war between the USA and China is not helping either,” said Nguyen.

When the governor shut down restaurants in March, owner Mahn Nguyen supported the move. “I could see the fear from my employees, and the concern, because we didn't know what it was,” he said.

We were doing well financially. But then the pandemic hit, and we were forced to close for 10 weeks.

I thought it was a good decision, you know, to close, and we didn't even consider doing takeout.

When we first reopened, our sales was down like 80 percent. And as a matter of fact, my people some of them left. One reason could be that they were not ready to go back to work. They got scared. Certainly, they didn't make enough money.

Superior Pho closed for 10 weeks after the state stopped dine-in service in March. The restaurant reopened in May. [Isaiah Paik / ideastream]

It has been very difficult for us. The food price has gone up, way up. The meat price now kind of come down a little bit, but it's up today. We still pay, for example, tofu, we still have to pay 300 percent of what we used to pay.

As you know, we all must practice social distancing. And so we reduce the capacity of the seating. And then, you know, we don't leave anything on the table anymore. So we have to pay people to put, you know, chopsticks and soup spoons and the sauces in a package.

To adhere to health safety guidelines, the traditional caddy of chopsticks, spoons and sauces has been removed from the dining tables. [Isaiah Paik / ideastream]

I don't know. I just hope that, you know, we can get this thing behind us, but I don't blame people who said it’s a “Chinese virus.”  I don’t blame American people. I am American. It’s too bad that people make it a political issue.

This audio postcard was produced by Isaiah Paik and Annie Wu. Isaiah was a summer intern with ideastream. He has also worked part time at Superior Pho since he was in high school.