An award-winning Vietnamese restaurant is making its next big move, and UBC students are in for a treat.
Crab Hot Lau, the Kingsway spot that’s earned back-to-back wins as Best Vietnamese Restaurant from Vancouver Magazine (2024 and 2025), is officially expanding with a second location at UBC.
The announcement was shared with Noms Magazine by owner Cherry Pham, who opened the restaurant in 2022 with zero industry experience and a mission to bring the comforting flavours of her hometown, Hai Phong, to Vancouver.
Cherry immigrated to Canada a decade ago and struggled to find food that matched her memories of Northern Vietnamese cuisine.
So she built Crab Hot Lau from scratch, literally.
By importing 80 percent of her ingredients weekly from Hai Phong and preparing everything in-house, daily.
Her restaurant quickly became known for its rich, deeply flavoured Rice Field Crab Hot Pot, and now, that same signature dish is heading to the west side.
The new UBC location takes over the previous Pho With You unit and is a response to what Cherry and her business partners saw as a gap in campus dining.
Her partners, who lived and taught at UBC, saw that students and faculty had few options beyond fast food.
They believed the community deserved better – something warm, nourishing, and authentic. Cherry agreed.
“When the opportunity came, it wasn’t just a business move — it was about creating a meaningful space where people can enjoy real food and feel a sense of home,” she told us.
The UBC location, opening as early as next week, will operate under Crab Hot Lau’s “Smart Franchise” model, which emphasizes purposeful growth.
Unlike traditional chains, the team retains full control over food quality, recipes, training, and service standards.
“We’re not here to chase fame or scale for the sake of it,” Cherry said. “We believe that when a brand is rooted in truth and care, its name will grow naturally.”
The menu will closely mirror the Kingsway original, with a few tweaks for campus life.
From 8am to 11am, a new breakfast menu will feature dry-style Vietnamese dishes perfect for students on the go.
From 11am into the evening, expect their signature soups – crab, beef pho, fish noodle – and after 5pm, the restaurant’s iconic crab hot pot will be available, just like on Kingsway.
With this expansion, Crab Hot Lau joins a small but growing group of independent restaurants setting up shop at UBC.
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Address: 2192 Western Parkway, Vancouver BC