Glasgow noodle bar's 'offensive' Phat Phuc ad cleared by watchdog after complaints

A Vietnamese restaurant advertising a dish called "Phat Phuc" has been cleared of any wrongdoing after killjoys complained it was offensive to children. The Hanoi Bike Shop noodle bar in Glasgow was investigated by a government watchdog after running a promotion for "delicious noodle-based dishes".

On one poster, the words "Phat Phuc" appeared in large capital letters alongside the phrase "get your noodle on". The advert promoted a four-course noodle menu and an event which had been running since March 2015.

But two people who saw the adverts on a train and at a station demanded that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ban the adverts. They said the ads featured a slogan which sounded like a swearword when spoken, and so was "inappropriate" for children.

Fet fooks

Hanoi Bike Shop defended the advert and said "phat phuc" is pronounced "fet fook" in Vietnamese and means "Happy Buddha". It said the bar was simply running a promotion for some of their noodle dishes.

The ASA said while it acknowledged the advert's text did sound like "f**k", it understood the word "happy" in Vietnamese was correctly spelled "phuc".

In a ruling published on 10 February, it said: "In the context of the posters, we considered that viewers who might have been offended by bad language were likely to recognise that 'Phuc' was from a reference to south-east Asian language, was different from the expletive and would not necessarily be pronounced in the same way.

"We considered that younger children who were unlikely to comprehend that 'Phuc' was a Vietnamese word were also unlikely to read or pronounce it as the expletive.

"We therefore, concluded that the posters were unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence."