ATLANTIC CITY — New Yorkers have been known to grouse about the Vietnamese food in their city. Many have tasted mind-numbingly good pho in places like Houston, San Diego and Falls Church, Va. (national hot spots of Viet cuisine), yet when they encounter the iconic beef and rice-noodle soup at home, the flavors often seem pallid and unknit.

There’s no need to hop onto a plane, though. A scant 125 miles away, in and around this gambling mecca, are a clutch of Vietnamese cafes that arguably rank among the nation’s most authentic, where the steaming bowls of pho have the kind of flavors that can make connoisseurs of the dish leap up from their plastic chairs with pleasure.

Take the pho dac biet at Hu Tieu Mien Tay. This modest cafe owned by Ha and Thomas Vu — its neon-lighted walls hung with Chinese paintings of raptors soaring over sunlit cliffs — is deep within the food court of Asian Supermarket in Pleasantville, N.J., just across a bay from Atlantic City. At lunch the place is packed, not just with Vietnamese, but with working-class patrons of every stripe, who eat silently save for the loud sound of slurping.

The pho is a favorite with this crowd, based on a deeply amber beef broth glittering with tiny droplets of oil. The first flavor to hit the tongue is star anise, followed in quick succession by scallions, cilantro, garlic, onions, charred ginger and perhaps a touch of chicken in the long-boiled broth. Last to unfold is pungent Chinese celery, an ingredient that Vietnamese restaurants in New York usually omit. In the depths is a hoard of meats, including raw steak sliced razor-thin — the bright pink color fading as you watch — along with bumpy white tripe, gobs of gluey tendon and tender brisket like something a Jewish mother might make.