'Pho-Nomenal' Results

Posted on July 15, 2016

A food-truck entrepreneur wins a contest — along with fans —
one dumpling at a time.

The sensible move for Sophia Woo ’10, who earned a master’s in accounting from UNC in 2011, would have been to have hung on to her job as an auditor.

Instead, Woo found an old truck on Craigslist, rebuilt it, painted it purple, christened it Pho-Nomenal Dumpling and started traversing the Triangle hawking Asian cuisine.

Betting on the taste buds of strangers had to work, right?

It worked.

Woo invited friend Sunny Lin, who majored in biomedical engineering at N.C. State, to share the courage of her culinary convictions. Barely a year into the venture, the partners entered Food Network’s Great Food Truck Race, a reality-TV competition to anoint the nation’s best new food truck. Contestants raced from Los Angeles to Chicago on Route 66, performing newsworthy feats while trying to sell the most food.

They had to win, right?

They won.

“I always had the desire to create something, to be a small-business owner,” Woo said. “I grew up watching my mother and grandmother cook. I always cooked a lot, too. I never figured out how to cook for two; I always cooked for 10.” In college she fed her roommates. It was always, “Please,
Sophia, will you make those awesome dumplings?”

Food, Woo observes, is a necessity and a luxury. “You can’t focus if you’re hungry, but then at a certain level you want more than sustenance.”

Pho-Nomenal aims to deliver way more. Along with fresh dumplings and pho, the Vietnamese soup staple, the truck serves braised-beef tacos and Asian fish tacos, both with fresh salsa. Woo and Lin love to surprise customers with culinary inventions. For Easter, they used a blowtorch to make an instantly classic dessert, “brulée s’mores” topped with marshmallow rabbit ears.

A typical Facebook post from a fan reads: “They sure named this truck right!!! Amazing amazing dumplings and all their food is truly phenomenal. And the heart and strength of the ladies and general fun atmosphere around the truck. Love love them!!!”

The local craze for haute-cuisine food trucks started about the time Woo realized she wasn’t office-job material. She often toured the Triangle’s mobile food scene, taking her disposable income from truck to truck, sampling and asking questions.

“Everyone warned us about trucks, but we ignored them,” she said. “Food trucks are a disaster on wheels. People buy old bread trucks or old snack-delivery trucks. They weren’t built to handle mobile kitchens, the constant motion.”

Something always goes wrong, she says.

“Did you notice how calm Sunny was when she was driving [during the Food Network race] and smoke started pouring out of the engine?” Woo asks. That was because the truck’s engine had already blown twice before.

“We call her Baby Girl,” Woo says of the truck. “She is a big diva, very high maintenance.”

But Woo relishes the frenzy. “We do all the marketing and social media ourselves, all the cooking and all the truck repair. We wear a ton of hats.”

Chapel Hill doesn’t permit food trucks on public roadways, but Pho-Nomenal can set up on off-road locations when invited. They recently served lunch at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, where Woo earned her business and accounting degrees. She said the business school taught her professionalism as well as the legal and financial aspects of running a business, but she credits her experience as an undergraduate with her appreciation of the importance of giving back. “We go by the saying, ‘Build a longer table, not a higher wall.’ ”

Pho-Nomenal supports Raleigh’s Haven House shelter, calling on Facebook followers to donate food, outgrown jackets and sleeping bags to the truck for a $2 discount.

Does she long to do something more stationary? Woo laughs and says no. “We have our feelers out for maybe opening a restaurant some day, but we don’t ever want to give up the truck part. People connect to it; it’s fun. … I was an auditor. Nobody likes to see the auditor.”

— Ann Loftin