When Vahe Margaryan tried pho for the first time, it quite literally changed his life.
“I got goosebumps because it was so good,” Margaryan said. “It was so good that I was like, ‘Oh man, I need to find a better job to make money,’ because it was expensive.”
That fateful sip happened at the now-closed Number Nine restaurant on Fourth Street. Margaryan had recently moved to Long Beach from Armenia to take care of his grandfather, and a friend had invited him there for a meal.
Margaryan loved the pho so much that he left his job in construction to be a busser at Number Nine. He worked his way up through the kitchen and eventually became the general manager before the restaurant closed during the pandemic.
Disappointed and not quite ready to let Number Nine go, Margaryan made a commitment to bring it back. He has created and closed his own versions of Number Nine twice already, but he’s not done yet. He just opened his third iteration as a pop-up in Tarantella on 4th — not far from Number Nine’s original location. He’s now open Monday through Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
“This is my food, this [is] my living, this is my everything,” he said.
The first version was called #9ToGo, and opened in the local liquor store Eddie’s Market just months after the original Number Nine closed. After a year and a half there, the city shut them down because the kitchen wasn’t permitted for hot foods.
From there, Margaryan opened his brick-and-mortar #9Pho down the street from where the original Number Nine was located. For three years, Margaryan prided himself on keeping costs relatively low. (The rare ribeye steak pho, for example, was $16.99.)
The rising costs of running a business, coupled with the location’s parking struggles, eventually made #9Pho unsustainable, and Margaryan shut down in July last year. When #9Pho closed, Margaryan was sure that was the end of the line for the restaurant dream he’d poured so much effort into.
Margaryan moved back to Armenia for six months to clear his head and figure out what came next. He briefly decided he didn’t want to work in the restaurant industry anymore, but when he returned to Long Beach, he felt #9Pho pulling him back in.
Margaryan said people kept telling him how much they missed his clean, high-quality food and asked if he would ever revive the restaurant. After giving it a lot of thought, Margaryan decided to give it another shot.
“I decided to do it because people love the food and they want this food to be in the community,” he said.
#9Pho returned at the beginning of August as #9PhoToGo. It continues to offer the same classic Vietnamese dishes, including pho, banh mi sandwiches and bun noodle bowls. Everything is made to order using fresh ingredients, and the prices have increased by only $1 to $2.
Margaryan is very grateful that the owners of Tarentella are letting him use the space and letting him keep the business on Fourth Street, which was a priority for him.
“The Fourth Street [has] become like a house to me,” he said. “It’s an honor to be in the street again.”
Margaryan is taking this new chapter of #9Pho one step at a time and isn’t sure what will come next, but he is optimistic that it will all work out in the end.
“This has a lot of potential to make something very big,” he said. “We’ll find a way to bring it back no matter what.”
#9PhoToGo is popping up in Tarantella on 4th at 2120 E Fourth Street, Monday through Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.