Madame Pho: Vietnamese chain shutting up shop at NI site
Vietnamese street food chain Madame Pho has announced that it will be closing its Dundonald restaurant today (Saturday, May 10).
Revealing the news on their social media channels yesterday, the owners stated: 'It's with a heavy heart that we have to announce the closure of our store here in Dundonald.
'Thank you for the memories but don't fret because we are not fully going away! Our staff will be staying on with the new owners Waka Asian Fusion!
'Our last day operating as Madame Pho will be Saturday 10 May (closing at 9pm) - come down and get your pho fix before then!'
Madame Pho, which was established in 2020, officially opened its eatery in Dundonald just last August.
The unit at Eastpoint Entertainment Village in the Co Down town was the company's fourth opening in around six weeks at the time.
The chain started out with a branch on Belfast's Botanic Avenue.
There are multiple Madame Pho locations in Northern Ireland now, all in or near Belfast. They operate at St Anne's Square, Botanic Avenue, Lisburn Road, the Ormeau Road, Longstone Street in Lisburn and the Antrim Road in Glengormley.
They also opened a location in Dublin in October 2024.
Madame Pho serve a wide variety of Vietnamese food, including the famous noodle soup dish it is named for. Guests can also try Banh Mi baguettes and Ca Ri curry.
In 2020, the Belfast Telegraph's Joris Minne described their Pho as 'wholesome… you can feel the health benefits as it flows down your throat, and the additional lime, chopped chillies and coriander on the side allows you to spice it up, and it does need a bit of a gee-up'.
Madame Pho founder William Chan sold the business to new owners in 2023.
He opened specialist Vietnamese coffee shop Phin on the Ormeau Road in April of last year.
He told the Belfast Telegraph he had a 'passion' for hospitality after growing up in the trade, with his family owning Furama, a Chinese restaurant in Antrim for over 30 years.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Herald Scotland
19 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
May jobs report shows 139,000 jobs were added last month
Before the report's release, economists surveyed by Bloomberg estimated that 125,000 jobs were added last month. Job gains for March and April were revised down by a combined 95,000, portraying a weaker labor market that believed in late winter and early spring. March's total was downgraded from 185,000 to 120,000 and April's, from 177,000 to 147,000. Is the job market good or bad right now? The labor market has held up remarkably well despite the hurdles posed by Trump's economic policies, with employment gains averaging well over 100,000 a month so far this year. But many forecasters reckoned a more pronounced hiring slowdown took shape in May and would intensify in the months ahead. Trump's trade strategy lies at the center of the projected downshift. He paused the high double-digit tariffs he slapped on dozens of countries in April and in May agreed to slash levies on Chinese imports from 145% to a still-elevated 30%. China agreed to broadly similar concessions. But the moves hinge on further U.S. deals with China and other countries. And 25% tariffs remain in effect on all imported cars and many goods from Canada and Mexico. This week, Trump hiked fees on steel and aluminum imports to 50% from 25%. And while a trade court last month struck down many of Trump's tariffs, they remain in effect during an appeal, prolonging the uncertainty for businesses. Economists expect the duties to reignite inflation within a month or two and dampen consumer spending. The costs also have heightened business uncertainty, curtailing hiring and investment. How many federal employees are laid off? The Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency has cut as many as 120,000 federal jobs but many workers have been placed on administrative leave, leaving them on U.S. payrolls pending court cases, Morgan Stanley said in a report. Still, the reductions have started to filter into the jobs numbers. Goldman Sachs estimates federal employment declined by a relatively modest 10,000 in May, adding to the 26,000 government workers that Capital Economics says already have been chopped since February. Are there still immigrants coming to America? Besides toughening enforcement at the southern border, the administration has canceled or declined to renew work permits and other protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants, economist Lydia Boussour of EY-Parthenon wrote in a note to clients. That will likely mean a smaller labor supply that further constrains hiring, especially in industries such as construction and hospitality, she said. Some calendar quirks also could have suppressed employment last month. For technical reasons, a late Easter likely boosted payrolls in April but heralds a lower tally for May as staffing levels returned to normal, Morgan Stanley said. Yet while hiring generally has slowed, other economists figured job growth remained sturdy last month as companies frustrated by labor shortages during the pandemic continued to curtail layoffs. Capital Economics and Barclays both predicted 150,000 jobs gains for May. By the end of the year, however, Barclays believes tariffs, federal layoffs and immigration curbs will slow average monthly job gains to about 75,000.
The Herald Scotland
a day ago
- The Herald Scotland
Lord Sainsbury: Give Glasgow greater devolved powers
"A major challenge which government faces if it wants to increase Scotland's rate of growth is a way to find and support such clusters," he said. "All the evidence from other countries suggests that the only way to effectively support clusters is to do so at a city region level. Read more: "I appreciate in Scotland, unlike in England, metro mayors have not yet been introduced, but if you want to support high-tech clusters, this is something I think you should seriously consider, with Greater Glasgow being given powers similar to those devolved to Greater Manchester and the West Midlands." Lord Sainsbury was speaking at the Creating the Jobs of Tomorrow conference organised by Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, where he was introduced to the stage by former Labour chancellor and prime minister Gordon Brown. Mr Brown said growth and productivity have been perennial problems in the UK and Scotland, with innovation the key to boosting performance. A new study by economist Dan Turner, head of research at the Centre for Progressive Policy, has suggested this could unlock the creation of hundreds of thousands of high-value jobs. "There are huge sources of innovation and inventiveness in Scotland, just as has been traditional in our history," he said. "The question is can we turn that into scalable companies that stay in Scotland, invest in Scotland, create jobs in Scotland, and Dan's study suggests we could create 300,000 jobs in the next 10 years. "That's 300,000 well-paying jobs, 120,000 in the new industries, the spin-offs in terms of the service sector another 180,000 - that is a possibility if we invest in the infrastructure, the skills, and the development necessary to achieve that." Lord David Sainsbury (Image: Nate Cleary) Lord Sainsbury is a Labour peer and served as minister for science and innovation under Mr Brown and his prime ministerial predecessor, Tony Blair, between 1998 and 2006. He was appointed a life peer in 1997. Lord Sainsbury said there are new opportunities for employment and growth in sectors such as quantum computing, artificial intelligence and biotechnology. "There are economists that will argue that it is investment that is the engine of economic growth, but we have to realise today that capital flows easily around the world, and it flows as it has always done, to where the best investment opportunities are created by innovation," Lord Sainsbury said. "You can sit in London today and you can invest in Silicon Valley, you can invest in practically any country - until recently you could even invest in Chinese venture capital - because that is what modern communication enables you to do. That is why investment is not the real driver of the economy, it's innovation." Among the other speakers was Michael Spence, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001 for his work in the analysis of markets with information imbalances. Read more: "There are two things that [people] associate with Adam Smith correctly," Mr Spence said. "One the 'invisible hand', which is the market system is a reasonably efficient tool for decentralising and allocating resources. "That actually is not the most important thing that Adam Smith said, but it's the one that neo-conservatives remember because they elevate market systems to the status of a religion, rather than a way of accomplishing economic and social goals. The most important one for our purposes is specialisation. "Adam Smith meant specialisation within an economy, when of course everything that David Sainsbury talked about in the global economy is just the Adam Smith insight writ large, and of course it is the ultimate source of growth. "Without specialisation you don't get scale of spread your activity over too much territory, and you don't get innovation. You get nothing if everybody has to do everything. "The fundamental message I want to deliver today is that's still true, and that growth is fundamentally about specialisation and structural change."
The Courier
a day ago
- The Courier
First look inside new Dunfermline world buffet restaurant Booffi
A new world buffet restaurant has opened in Dunfermline. Booffi has taken over the former Kinema building on Carnegie Drive. The restaurant is a fourth venture for the Glasgow-based firm, which also has venues in Clydebank, Forge Retail Park and Glasgow Fort. The buffet offers a variety of dishes from different cultures around the world, including Italian, Indian and Chinese. The Kinema, a former dance hall and nightclub, first became a world buffet restaurant in 2018. However, it was forced to close during the Covid lockdowns. The Courier was given a look around the new restaurant before it opened to the public on Friday.
