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Pho spot Les Noo’dle has closed quietly after four years in the Montrose, and a popular birria food truck is taking over.
Members of a Montrose neighborhood Facebook group first noted Les Noo’dle’s closure last week. Posters on the Houston Architectural Info Forums reported that the space would be taken over by food truck Blk Mkt Birria. Sure, enough, during the holiday weekend, the Blk Mkt food truck was parked in Les Noo’dle’s tiny parking lot, and a new sign for the birria shop was already on the door.
The food truck, which is frequently parked at Spring Street Beer and Wine Garden on Houston Avenue, specializes in birria des res dishes, in which beef is slow-stewed in spices until it is fall-apart tender. That beef is then served up in tacos (with a side of consome for dipping), in cheesy quesadillas and burritos, and as a topping on fries.
Les Noo’dle opened in 2018 at 1717 Montrose Avenue, serving up three types of pho — beef, chicken and vegetarian — with other options, including spring rolls, spicy cucumber salad, and Vietnamese street corn. Before that, owners Cat Huynh and Angie Dang ran Les Bag’et out of the same address, which served a wider variety of Vietnamese fare including banh mi sandwiches, steak and eggs, and vermicelli bowls. Huynh and Dang decided to covert the restaurant into a pho bar owing to the soup’s popularity in Houston — the transition made it possible for them to focus on more varieties of the dish in a neighborhood where, at the time, pho was hard to come by.
A representative for Blk Mkt said the restaurant should be open in the next few weeks. In the meantime, Les Noo’dle and Les Ba’get fans can visit the Les Ba’get location in Garden Oaks, at 1717 34th Street.
