Inside Sen, Asheville’s New Vietnamese Restaurant Built on Family and Pho

By Eric Barton | April 25, 2026

AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.

Sen Vietnamese Street Food has the kind of backstory that would already make me want to become a regular here. You know the one: couple meets, falls in love thanks in part to the recipes they shared at big family tables, and a restaurant is born. Hooked already. It’s a bonus that the food also happens to be downright fantastic.

Sen comes from Quyen and Jesse Hawes, who met three years ago. He was living in Columbia, South Carolina, working for a web development and branding firm. She owns Avanté Beauty Lounge, a nail salon on Hendersonville Road. Both had two kids from previous marriages, and their families kept ending up around big tables together, eating Vietnamese food cooked by Quyen and her family.

Jesse had little experience with Vietnamese food before that. “The first time I had pho, I was blown away,” he told me yesterday when I sat down there for lunch. “I loved it. Six days a week still.”

Sen Vietnamese Street Food Restaurant Asheville

They talked early on about opening a restaurant together. That idea ran deeper than just the kind of talk many of us have about doing it someday. Quyen’s mother had owned a restaurant in Vietnam in the 1970s, and she’d carried the dream of doing it again. When a space at 89 Patton Avenue became available, they took it and did a cold opening on Dec. 12.

Now Quyen’s mother, father, and uncle are all in the kitchen, which gives the food a feeling of continuity, of something handed across generations. AS for the pho, he'd tell me only that it simmers for 12 to 14 hours. "If I told you anything more, Quyen would kill me," he joked.

The place is still coming together, which is part of its charm. The design is simple, with tables spread across the left side of the room and a bar on the right under red paper lanterns that give the space a little lift. They’re still working on the liquor license. Local artist Sarah Alday is working on a large mural on the left wall, coming in at night to add to it. The menu is still evolving too. They tried bánh mì one night, but finding the right rolls became such a production that Quyen’s sister ended up baking them herself, which is not a sustainable weeknight solution.

Summer rolls

What’s already here is enough for now. The summer rolls are packed with shrimp and veg and served with a peanut sauce that did what a peanut sauce ought to do. The pho with brisket and rare beef was the centerpiece, and the broth was the reason. It had that long-built depth that makes a bowl feel less cooked than assembled over time, with warm spice notes running through it, maybe star anise, maybe cloves, maybe cinnamon, maybe all of it together in proportions nobody was about to hand over. My friend’s vermicelli bowl came hot, loaded with fresh vegetables and chicken grilled with a savory barbecue sauce that had enough character to stop conversation for a minute.

Vermicelli bowl

Rare beef and brisket pho

What lingers after a visit here is the sense that Sen means more to the people building it than simply another restaurant opening in downtown Asheville. This is a place bound by family history, by risk, and by that downright incredible pho.