Pho 79 will soon sling soup on the 16th Street Mall

If you work downtown and are often in need of a quick lunchtime pho fix, help will soon be at hand. Pho 79, one of our favorite pho restaurants in the city, has signed a lease on the 16th Street Mall and will soon be slinging up big bowls of noodles there.

The restaurant is slated for a spot on the second floor of Champa Square, a development at 16th and Champa that has space for several restaurants. The new incarnation of Cafe Berlin, for instance, went into that address earlier this year; Diego's has a basement slot.

An employee at the Pho 79 on Federal Boulevard confirms that the downtown restaurant is part of the same small noodle chain that includes locations in Westminster and Aurora. "The new Pho 79 will have the same menu," he promises, and that means a long list of pho dishes, plus such Vietnamese specialties as vermicelli and bun bo hue, a beef noodle soup.

Look for Pho 79 to open on the mall sometime early next year.