Heights sports bar offering 20 draft beers, multiple televisions, and inexpensive daily specials such as phở and assorted noodle and rice bowls.

4721 Main St., Suite A, Houston, TX 77009
(281) 888-9415
Website

11am–10pm Mon–Thu; 11am–12am Fri; 11am–11pm Sat; Closed Sun.

The coffee and donuts at Morningstar have grown into a not-cheap, but necessary habit for us, and each time we make the trek for a morale boost of caffeine and cute-as-a-button carbs, a more reasonable offer tempts us from elsewhere in this plaza. From the outside, the Heights branch of the local Vietnamese / American chain Hughie’s looks like a typical sports bar, the kind of place that our attention would skim past had it not been for the magic words “Vietnamese lunch specials.” After musing about the quality of the food for months, we decided to try Hughie’s for lunch. 

As it turns out, Hughie’s looks like a typical sports bar from the inside, too. After parting the front doors, we faced a row of screens above a bar featuring jet-ski racing and other sports coverage. A hostess greeted us promptly and led us to a booth where we could mostly tune out the televisions. The menu offers the rare opportunity to choose from both Vietnamese fare, such as bánh mì, shaking beef, and spring rolls, and bar standards like hamburgers, french fries, and country fried steak. Blackboards featuring daily food and drink specials shared space with 20 beer taps. Hughie’s also touts special “beer lunch” and $15 “business lunch” combos. However, on our usual hunt for lunch-time bargains, we went straight to the blackboard specials: Wednesday’s were “$6 Phở & Flat Noodle Pot.”

Phở: The $6 Wednesday phở at Hughie’s does not come with a wealth of choices: filet mignon, brisket, or meatballs. We opted for the filet, and what was shortly placed before us was a generous bowl of steaming phở topped with tender slices of rare steak, accompanied by the usual (but slightly anemic) platter of bean sprouts, herbs, and chiles. Phở aromatics like star anise and cinnamon occupy the forward position of Hughie’s broth, noticeably more so than other places we usually frequent (such as Les Noo’dle). The depth of the flavor pleasantly surprised us, as did the obvious fact that someone in the kitchen knows how to cook noodles so they do not clump together. Hughie’s phở might not be the very best in town, and the choices for add-ins are limited, but it is an honest-to-goodness quality bowl of beef noodle soup well worth six dollars, especially if you like the typical phở spices. We plan to slurp up more on future Wednesdays. 

Flat noodle pot: For the flat noodle pot, you pick a protein (beef, pork, or chicken) and a vegetable (we forget all of the veggie options, but we chose beef and Chinese broccoli for our pot). What came out of the kitchen was a soup-bowl-sized, metal pot containing a bed of flat noodles topped with a stir fry of broccoli and thinly-sliced beef in a light sauce and a sprinkling of fried shallot. Truthfully, the flat noodle pot did not knock us out; the noodles were fairly overcooked, and the seasoning too indiscernible, inspiring us to reach for multiple squirts of sriracha for liveliness. However, the vegetable had a nice crunch, and the meat was cooked well, so if you’re not a big fan of spicy food this could be for you. It’s still a good deal for $6.

Hughie’s seems like one of those “only in Houston” places, where you can watch the game on multiple big-screen TVs and down local craft beers while digging into some authentic phở or a “bánh mì burger.” And if you happen to be in the Heights on a Wednesday, the $6 phở special is hard to beat. While you’re at it, we also suggest hitting up Morningstar for coffee and dessert (see Kelly Steenson’s great mini-documentary, Donut People, for context).