Pho restaurant near Sangin Station, Daegu: first bun cha at Laichen

Are you all surviving this brutal heat okay? 🥵 Yesterday was apparently the first day of autumn on the lunar calendar, and it's wild how the seasons still somehow know — the wind did feel a touch cooler.

For a rare meal out, we went to Laichen Wolseong Branch (라이첸 월성점), famous as both a pho spot and a banh xeo spot!

Location, hours and parking at Laichen Wolseong Branch

Laichen Wolseong Branch is a Vietnamese restaurant at 1595-6 Sangin-dong, Dalseo-gu, Daegu, at the Wolseongnam intersection. It's open 11:00–21:30, has no regular closing day, and has a building parking lot.

• Address = 1595-6 Sangin-dong, Dalseo-gu, Daegu
• Hours = 11:00 – 21:30
• Closed = No regular closing day
• Parking = Building parking lot available

Laichen has held its spot as a Sangin-dong favorite for quite a while now, known for recipes developed personally by the local Vietnamese owner to recreate authentic flavors. My daughter eats pho pretty often but had never once tried bun cha, so I brought her here for a proper Vietnamese meal!

Laichen Wolseong Branch sits at the Wolseongnam intersection, so you can walk from Sangin Station, but since there's a parking lot in the building, driving works too.

You can check out the menu board outside the store, but we'd already decided today's order, so we headed straight inside 🤭

Weekday evening waiting and group seating?

Even though it was an early weekday evening, Laichen Wolseong Branch was fully booked, so we waited about 10 minutes before sitting down. If there's a wait, you can apparently pre-order so your food comes out fast once you're seated — good to know!

There's a separate group seating area too, so if you're planning a gathering, booking ahead lets you eat in your own private room 😉

The menu board and what's in the two-person set

Beyond pho and banh xeo, Laichen serves a wide range of Vietnamese dishes like fresh spring rolls and fried rice, all cooked by a Vietnamese chef using broth brewed in-house rather than extract — so it's a place where you can really taste authentic Vietnam. If you're curious about the full menu, check the board below~

We ordered the two-person set that lets you try bun cha, pho and banh xeo all together.

They give you shrimp balls or coconut juice for writing a Naver review, which seems worth doing, and there are summer-only specials too — half-chicken pho and cold pho.

My daughter's first bun cha, and why it fits summer

The whole two-person set at Laichen Wolseong Branch came out all at once. Since my daughter had never tried bun cha, we dug into that first! Bun cha is charcoal-grilled pork and vegetables dipped in a sweet-and-sour sauce — it's not a hot-broth dish, so it actually suits this scorching summer really well 😋

The meatballs and nem (fried spring rolls) that come alongside the bun cha are a real treat too, no need to even say it 💕

24-hour beef bone broth pho

Next up was Laichen's pho, said to use beef bone broth simmered in-house for 24 hours!

We paid an extra ₩500 to add bean sprouts to the basic pho, and with the generous brisket and refreshing broth, one sip immediately made me think this would be great as a hangover cure too 🤭

How was the banh xeo batter?

Last was banh xeo, which you could call a Vietnamese-style savory pancake! I once had banh xeo near Jukjeon Station that was so hard and disappointing I kept my distance from it for a while afterward 😓

Thankfully, Laichen's banh xeo had a perfectly fried rice-flour batter and was generously stuffed with meat and shrimp, so I really enjoyed eating it~

Worth recommending for a Sangin-dong date?

Maybe because there are a lot of cram schools nearby, I surprisingly saw quite a few students eating solo too — but I'd say this is a proper Vietnamese restaurant worth recommending for a Sangin-dong date course. It's not close to home, but it's a place I'd want to visit again 😁