Janel F.
Yelp
I have been wanting to try this place out for the longest, but I could never get myself to "cheat" on my go-to pho spot. However, we finally tried this spot for dinner yesterday as it was a perfect time for a bowl of pho, as the weather called for it.
We ordered our usual as we would at any Vietnamese restaurant. It being:
- Vietnamese spring roll (A1): Normally, these are my absolute favorite appetizers to start with, but I was pretty disappointed as the mint leaves took over the entire roll, and the pork meat was too thick and dry and overly chewy. The house peanut sauce was wayyyyy too thick for our liking, which also came with a ton of peanut chunks, which I also don't mind, but it was just too much. I couldn't finish it.
- Vietnamese egg rolls (A6): This is my son's favorite order at any Vietnamese restaurant, and he usually eats the entire two rolls. However, he couldn't and offered the other roll to both my husband and me. My husband took a bite and decided that he didn't want it, so I took a bite and immediately understood why my son and husband didn't care to finish it. The egg rolls were soggy, and the filling was so mushy, as if it was left soaking in the grease oil it was fried in. The sweet chili sauce here was new to us and not what we were used to, and it had a weird taste.
- Oxtail pho (N2): It came with two pieces of oxtail, and they added pieces of beef steak to offset the price of the oxtail pho ($16.25). The broth's flavor was overpowered with star anise, which gave a taste between cinnamon and black licorice (gag). Usually, I wouldn't mind it, but it was again overpowering to the point where I could not taste any "beef" in the broth.
I added hoisin sauce, watered-down/bootleg siracha, and chili oil to see if it would help, and it did a bit, but I couldn't get over the overcooked rice noodles. As much as I tried to force myself to finish my pho, I couldn't. So I hated that I wasted my food. Again, the noodles were overcooked to my liking. Our go-to pho spot, where I always order oxtail pho, comes with six pieces of oxtail meat, and I only pay $15.99.
- Eye round steak, brisket, and beef flank (N10): my husband ordered this, and again, sadly, his bowl of pho was wasted except for the meat, which he did not want to waste. As for the flavoring of the broth and rice noodles, please see *oxtail* above for broth flavor and noodles. Such a disappointment.
My son initially ordered chicken pho, but the server returned and stated that they were out of chicken, which was such a shocker. So he settled for a kid's chopped steak pho, which he ended up not liking, so again, wasted food.
Service could've been better. Our server barely came to see if we needed anything, and when we did, we would have to wave down another server, who also made us feel like we were such an inconvenience when asked for napkins and utensils. He would respond, "Your waiter will bring it to you," and walk off. I was a bit confused because it was not busy at all, and you could see them both hanging behind the counter on their phones.
The ambiance was nice! Sadly, we will not be back and will stick with our go-to Vietnamese restaurant, which I promise never to cheat on again.