Mekha Noodle Bar & Cafe

I don’t understand how this place can be below 5 stars. If a phở place can serve up a vegetarian phở that is good enough to crush other shop’s beef phở, you’ve come to the right place. Phở with a laugh Cambodian spin. Unique reciepes, and decent portions. You’ll love it here. This is a weekly visit for me.

Delicious pork and beef broth and flavorful meats in all their soups. Their peanut sauce is a bit watery and a little too sweet for me. Stick with the soups and you can’t go wrong. Very kind service.

Best Phở in Portland period. Family owned and operated. I alway see the same folks serving up the most consistently good Phở in town. They have a very eclectic Vietnamese menu featuring lots of really good Vermicelli noodle dishes and vegetarian options. They also just expanded the space, adding a swanky bar and lounge room. They just created new specialties to the menu I haven’t tried yet to try like the pork chops and chicken pot stew. This place is legit! They are always tweaking the dishes with new flavors like a chef having fun by switching up sauces and keeping the essence of what the dish is supposed to taste like. 5 *****!

A friend and I have eaten here in the past and loved it. Great food, large portions and quick service. Can’t really ask for anything else.

Mekha Noodle Bar & Café is a mecca in Northeast Portland for Vietnamese/​Cambodian cuisine with a few Chinese classics sneaking onto the menu. It’s a simple restaurant with street parking out front and a handful of booths inside. There may be cheaper phở around town and even though service and flavors were both timid, I was thankful for my pilgrimage to Mekha.
Canh Ga Chien $ 8.95
Crispy and sweet Caramelized Chicken Wings with a Garlic Pepper Marinade were a messy, but tempting appetizer.
Phnom Penh Noodles Soup $ 9.95
Known as Hu Tieu Nam Vang this bowl is loaded with meats and veggies featuring Rice Phnom Penh Noodles in a mild Pork Broth.
Phở Tai Noodles $ 8.95
Tender Phở Noodles with slices of Tenderloin Steak in a simple Broth. Ask for extra Jalapenos and Lime for more flavor.
When your craving for Vietnamese food hits along NE Sandy Blvd., turn towards Mekha, say a little prayer of thanks, and enjoy some bowls of Mekha magic.

This is my absolute favorite phở place that I’ve tried so far. Their vegetarian phở is superb and the service is great. I also recommend the fresh spring rolls with tofu.

Easily forgettable, the dishes offered less taste and variety than many other vietnamese places I have frequented. I would typically not bother writing a «meh» review, but I want to make sure I don’t accidentally set out to go here again. We had the quail and the egg noodle soup with everything. The egg noodles were no better than the typical egg ramen you would find in the grocery store. The meat was not particularly tender or flavorful. Sidebar: I always wonder if they ever change those little spoons sitting in the table sauces.

This is an all around great place to get a meal. Their fare tends to focus on soups, rice, noodles and meat. The tables have plenty of condiments and utensils. It is on a certain part of Sandy Boulevard, so the qualm might be that isn’t as flashy as elsewhere in Portland.
I enjoyed going here. What I had was the soup with meat and seafood. It came in only five minutes, granted that I was the only table there. Such was rich and sprawling with flavor. The noodles were crispy and the meat tender. Not all soups entice me to sip it until the cows come home, but this one did. Soup in a can is despicable and soup in restaurants is often forgettable, but not here.
Phở is given it’s due here.

This place hasn’t changed one bit since my last visiting.-
Which is good!
I’m not an adventurous person so I usually stick with what I had previously which is Hu tiu mi nam vang dry version. Amazing like last time I had it. The rice and egg noodles were mixed with a bunch of vegetables, and of course their secret sauces.
Decent amount of meat was also mixed together within the bowl.

Best vegetarian phở in the city. And I’ve tried the majority of them. Here, the chefs put as much thought into the complexity of the vegetarian broth as they do the meat broth. Every time I have been here, the broth tastes different than the last. The tofu is perfectly cooked as well. I am not a huge fan of the vegetables they put in the phở (a mix of cut up squash, carrot, broccoli) so I usually ask them to hold the veggies. You can also ask for extra tofu and the addition is extremely generous.
The service is fast and efficient and the ambiance is welcoming and sweet.

A friend recommended that we meet here for lunch on a cold winter day. Luckily for us, a hot bowl of noodles was just what we needed to warm us up. I ordered the Bún bò Hu (spicy beef noodles) which was seasoned nicely and not too greasy. It had a little kick to it but it wasn’t overwhelmingly spicy. The noodles were topped with lots of goodies like beef shank, sliced tenderloin, sliced pork roll, and pork blood. A very hearty and satisfying bowl of noodles. My overall dining experience was good and it’s close to where I live so it’s convenient. The restaurant itself was clean and cozy. Service was quick and efficient. You may want to get there a little early during peak meal times because there is only street parking.

This place is SO good! I went on a windy, rainy, chilly Portland night. I got the vegetarian phở. The table had such a wide variety of sauces and things to add to the phở. It was amazing! It might be some of the best phở in town!

My experience at Mekha started out so promising. It smells like a phở restaurant should when you walk in, and the two ladies working were very nice.
Complimentary hot tea is always welcome, but the tea they gave us had a slightly odd flavor, it wasn’t quite as sweet or floral as I’ve gotten used to at other Vietnamese restaurants.
I ordered the pork vermicelli dish choosing the teriyaki option instead of lemongrass. The dish comes with peanut sauce, which came out first. The peanut sauce had great flavor and interesting texture with toasted garlic on top.
Next came the dish itself. I was immediately impressed by the portion size, and the fact that they don’t skimp on the meat. But, that’s where the positive experience ended.
The teriyaki pork was on the verge of being inedible. I have two dogs, and occasionally buy them pig ears as treats. The way those dog treats smell is way too similar to the taste of the pork for my liking. Even after drowning it in the peanut sauce, I was only able to choke down less than half of it.
Fortunately, I was with my girlfriend and she was kind enough to share her phở with me, so I didn’t leave with a completely empty stomach.

Phở-​nomenal soup! Phở-​ntastic! I had the number 14, which is the phở with two different cuts of beef in it. The broth was light, beefy, minty and soothing. The meats weren’t too fatty and not too dry and the portion is large. I went for lunch and I was appreciative that we were in and out of there in about 40 minutes. Worth a shot!

A lot of ways to get spoiled in this town – beer, sandwiches, noodles. Five years ago I’d have been wowed by this place but now its more like a norm, an expectation, Read the reviews of this place, and I like to try either a place’s specialty or something else unusual, so went for the Hu Tieu Nam Vang – generous with the meat, broth rich with fat flavor. a little sweet and thin. Noodles stuck together a bit and offered mostly texture. Glad I’d thrown in some fresh garlic (wish more places offered it) and heat. Tony’s phở was very savory, strong on the star anise.

On my way to the airport one night, famished and had some time to kill. Since it was a chilly night nothing would hit the spot better than a meal with some soup. Stopped here on a recommendation from a friend and I was not disappointed. I order the hu tieu nam vang combination dry style. It’s a rice noodle dish with a thin slice of pork, grounded pork, shrimp, a ton of veggies and other offerings. The only thing I had to add was chili since I like my food spicy. Note that if you get it dry style, you get a bowl of soup on the side which had some pork and the shrimp in it. Service was timely and friendly. My food came out in under five minutes. Only reason this review is missing a start is because my soup was really warm but not hot.

FORGET all the other items on the menu and get hu tieu nam vang because it’s the best in Portland! Hu tieu nam vang is one of my favorite noodle soups and I’ve had it everywhere in Portland and even Vietnam. I suggest putting some of the pickled chilies in it and crushing it with the back of your spoon to make your broth spicier but it’s traditional to add black pepper. They give you tons of meat and the broth is so flavorful. You won’t regret it.

This is one of my favorite places for phở in Portland. Whenever I am in town for a few days I like to come out here and have some soup. This is my go to place for Vietnamese soups! I have never had bad food here. I have tried a lot of the items on the menu and they are all pretty solid. I have no complaints at all. I like the Phở Bo, Phở Ga, Bun Bo Hue and several of the noodle dishes. I sometimes get an order of spring rolls but if I do I am unable to finish my soup. I always leave this place happy and full.
Thank you for having such a great place to get soup and noodles. Also, service is always fast and everyone is so polite.

I’ve been here twice. I went with multiple people each time and we exclusively ordered the soups — Phở & combos.
FOOD
I got the beef phở and the egg noddle/​rice noodle pork shrimp combo soup #12.
Portions are large and prices are reasonable.
Broth is lighter & blander than what I’d expect from a noodle-​heavy dish.
Noodles had perfect texture. Not too soft and only slightly clumped. I loved that egg noodles and rice noodles came as a combo for many dishes. They’re both delicious!
Meat portions were ideal. Perfect for each bowl.
Sauces. I missed the oily/​smokey/​red pepper sauce that normally appears on vietnamese restaurant tables. In lieu of that, Mekha has a fish sauce, which was fun, and complete with hairs of the anchovy or whatever they make it with. It was great sauce, probably best with wings or quail or any other fried meat appetizer.
It was nice to have hoisin at the table for those who like a sweeter broth.
Love the vinegared hot thai red peppers at the table.
DRINKS
Friends got the coffee drinks and enjoyed them. But who could go wrong with coffee and condensed milk on ice?
AMBIANCE & SERVICE
Nothing special. Regular diner environment. Unattentive servers and you pay at the counter.
A satisfying meal when you’re in the mood for a large hot soup. But nothing stuck out to me in particular to merit any more stars. I think twice is enough for this place.

This place isn’t bad. I think the portions could be larger. I didn’t get many noodles in my hu tieu nam vang so maybe my bowl was just an off bowl. Also taking a quail egg out of this dish is evil lol.
I was hoping it would be the most amazing HT but it wasn’t. I like the one at Phở Nguyen actually better and the one at Hanoi Kitchen is really good as well. I like when there are more noodles, quail egg, bbq pork, among other meats… and some of shrimp chip or taro chip or something crispy with it.
The wings and the iced coffee was delicious though. Yummmmy. I’ll be back but it’s definitely not my favorite place for HT.