Aberdeen’s Electric Building slated for new Vietnamese restaurant

By Louis Krauss • January 21, 2019 4:27 pm

A new Vietnamese restaurant plans to open in the old Electric Building in downtown Aberdeen this summer, and the building’s new owner is well under way with renovations.

Hue Le, who bought the building a little more than a year ago, lives in Bellevue and said he owns several Vietnamese and pho restaurants in Seattle, elsewhere in Washington State, and California. Once while traveling to the coast for a fishing trip, Le said he noticed the for sale sign on the building at the northeast corner of Broadway and Heron streets, and thought it was a good location to open a restaurant.

“I want to offer more good food for the city of Aberdeen,” Le said, who added his hope is the restaurant opens sometime this summer. “Looking around here, we don’t have much Asian food.”

His tentative name for the restaurant is “Go Get the Pho.”

Le said he looks forward to opening the restaurant and offering healthy variations of pho — a popular kind of Vietnamese noodle soup with meat and vegetables — as well as sandwiches, fried rice and spring and egg rolls.

“I think this could help bring more healthy food options to downtown,” said Le, who immigrated from Vietnam to the U.S. 40 years ago.

There’s still a lot of work to be done on the building, but Le has already made headway. New roofing was installed not long ago to stop leaking on the second floor, he said. He has also begun replacing the windows and building walls on the first floor to separate the bar and eating area from the kitchen and restrooms.

Another room could be set aside for entertainment, where Le said he wants to bring in some pool tables he has stored in Seattle.

Depending on how business goes after opening the restaurant, Le said he might renovate the second floor to include an office, and build short-term rental studio apartments for people who are on vacation and want to stay for a week or two.

With businesses like the Market Place also planning to move to downtown Aberdeen soon, and new businesses like Mount Olympus Brewery and North Pacific Utopian Wares now open, Aberdeen Revitalization Movement’s director Wil Russoul said he looks forward to supporting businesses like Le’s to bring more life to some of Aberdeen’s vacant downtown spaces.

“There are several other investments in town, and we definitely want to partner, support and encourage growth,” said Russoul, “especially when it involves creating more opportunities for people to be downtown. I look it as not just an economic investment, but also a social economic investment.”