It saddens me to write this, but this was one of the worst experiences I've ever had at a restaurant. The service was absolutely terrible, and honestly, some of the worst I've ever experienced. The staff was, for lack of a better word, extremely slow and didn't seem like they really cared about doing their jobs.
I stopped by for takeout with a friend because we just wanted to grab some food and take it home. We ended up waiting roughly 30 minutes for our food to be prepared and packed. There also wasn't really a designated place to wait for takeout orders, so my friend and I, along with several food delivery drivers, were all awkwardly crowded together near the front of an already very small restaurant, just standing around waiting for orders. During that time, we also saw quite a bit of how the dine-in customers were being treated.
It seemed to be a "seat yourself" kind of place, at least during our visit. You would come in, find an empty and clean table, sit down, and wait for someone to eventually come over and take your order.
I also wanted to mention that, at one point, the busser, the person who was just cleaning and clearing tables, started seating customers because the waiter was nowhere to be found. I found that particularly odd. Since that isn't what you would typically see.
We also saw one party become increasingly frustrated because they had asked their waiter multiple times about their drinks and were repeatedly told that they would be brought out. At one point, the customer even asked if they could just get the drinks themselves, since they could see them sitting in the fridge at the front. Despite that, the waiter told them that they would bring it over in a minute. The drinks eventually arrived, but only after the party was already more than halfway through their meal. From what we heard, they had asked about their drinks at least 7+ times. It was pretty disappointing to watch, especially because they had repeatedly asked their waiter and the waiter just brushed it off.
As for our own experience, we arrived around 7:00 PM on a Sunday. The restaurant wasn't particularly busy with dine-in customers, although we did see several DoorDash/Grubhub orders come through.
We specifically came to this restaurant because we were craving pho and the reviews were super positive. The waitress took our order, and then we waited about 5-10 minutes before being told that they were out of pho noodles and that we would have to substitute them with either vermicelli or egg noodles. If we had known that when we first ordered, we probably would have just left. But since we had already been waiting, we decided to stay and just go with vermicelli noodles. I honestly did not expect them to run out of pho noodles during dinner service, the one thing the restaurant is literally named after.
After that, we waited another 30-ish minutes for our food. We had placed our takeout order well before a few customers who came in after us, yet those customers received their food before we did. At that point, we really started questioning how things were being run.
To top it all off, when our food was finally packed, the containers weren't sealed properly, and some of the soup had spilled inside the bag. This happened before we had even driven away from the restaurant. Thankfully, they had at least bagged the soup separately, so it didn't spill all over everything else.
As for the food, everything was just alright, nothing too outstanding about it that would pull me to come back. I definitely wouldn't say it was worth all the trouble we went through to get it, especially considering how disorganized the entire experience was.
Overall, this was a really disappointing experience from the moment we walked in to the moment we stepped back into our car. The slow service, running out of pho noodles during dinner service, the long wait for our food, and the poorly sealed containers were all major disappointments. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be stopping by here again. read more