Is your mouth watering for some Vietnamese flavours? For Boyle Street and McCauley residents and visitors alike, the food that immediately springs to mind is often from Pagolac Restaurant – but the venerable eatery operated by the Luong family has now closed after three decades.

Pagolac’s distinctive bright red “laughing cow” sign has graced the corner of 95th Street and 106 Avenue since Vietnamese restaurants started opening in Canada, adding synergy to traditional Canadian-Chinese cuisine.
 
Pagolac’s sign features a cow because the restaurant was first famous for beef dishes. Their “Bo 7 Mon” was beef served in seven different courses. The variety included beef-filled leaf wraps, beef congee, seasoned cubed beef, and more. Families and friends came from all over the city to share these tasty delicacies.
 
Before long, Edmontonians learned to enjoy more flavours from the menu. Spicy satay beef stew, crispy green onion cakes, and comforting pho soup (noodles with sliced beef, Vietnamese meatballs, seafood, or chicken) were once “exotic” choices, but became trendy when friends shared their discoveries of these new taste sensations.
 
Pagolac became a go-to place, and the menu grew to nearly 200 choices. With popularity, the demand for these new foods grew, the restaurant prospered, and Pagolac launched additional locations in South Edmonton.
 
The original Chinatown eatery has now closed its doors (their other locations remain – visit www.pagolacrestaurant.com), and we’ll all miss the spring rolls, vermicelli bowls, and the vintage look of their dining room with the delicious smell of spicy hot soup bowls rising to meet your nose as you entered their glass doors on a cold winter day. and we’ll all miss the spring rolls, vermicelli bowls, and the vintage look of their dining room with the delicious smell of spicy hot soup bowls rising to meet your nose as you entered their glass doors on a cold winter day.

Alan lives in McCauley. He is the Chair of the Boyle McCauley News Board of Directors.