This restaurant has a 4.5 stars Yelp rating. I brought my wife here because the pictures and reviews looked very good. The food wasn't even close to 4.5 stars! It got 3 stars only because they are not as bad as Le Bledo Eatery which was rated at 2 stars. There were few people coming in on a Saturday evening!! Both dine-in and carryout totaled 5 orders while we were there for 80 minutes. That tells me a lot. Covid-19 spacing was easy because only 2 other customers were eating in the dining room the whole time we were there. Masks were required for everyone. Hand sanitizer was available.
We bought pho, grilled pork/shrimp with noodles, combination fried rice, chè thập cẩm + sầu riêng and lotus tea. The pho had eye round, brisket, flank, fatty brisket, soft tendon, tripe and beef balls. The meat and noodles were fine. The broth was weak with no depth of flavor. It was chicken broth. Look at the posted picture. I've had better tasting broth in canned soup! We ordered the P1 combo special which was supposed to be a beef noodle soup. I hope their beef broth is better. Only one restaurant's broth was worst than this, it was Le Bledo Eatery. Most of the basil and bean sprouts were starting to rot. The ends of the bean sprouts were light brown and the basil leaves had plenty of black spots. It was unbelievably irresponsible to serve this!
The grilled pork and shrimp came with an egg roll, rice vermicelli noodles, shredded carrots, bean sprouts, cucumbers and sauce. The meat was cooked well. They were tender with a decent flavor. There was only 2 pieces of shrimp. The cucumbers and carrots were fresh (thank goodness), but the basil leaves were not. Look at the posted picture. The basil was dry and wilted. The bean sprouts were kind of limp. At least it wasn't brown yet. The sauce tasted good but not strong enough. There was only enough to flavor two thirds of the dish. The egg roll was crispy with a filling that was typical cabbage.
The combination fried rice had shrimp, chicken, onions, corn, peas, carrots and rice. It came with a cup of sauce. The sauce was essentially dark soy sauce. If flavor was behavior, this one would be very salty. Hope they didn't strain their brains dreaming up this sauce. How was the fried rice? If you google bland, you'll see a picture of this. The shrimp was the only thing with a normal flavor. The chicken and vegetables had little flavor. Amazing! How did they do that and why? There was no sauce in the dish. I guess the cup of sauce was it. We didn't use it at all because we decided none of this was worth eating. I did taste it again because I couldn't believe it was for real.
The chè thập cẩm + sầu riêng was a Vietnamese mixed sweet soup dessert made with coconut milk, crushed ice, mung bean, red bean, red colored water chestnut, green jelly and durian. Looked it up online and one person said it was delicious. Wrong! Never get anything with durian in it. It can make you nauseated. Natural durian can smell like a mixture of rotten onions, turpentine and gym socks. This durian tasted like garlic with slightly sweeten caramel. When the soup got warmer, an unpleasant low level odor occurred inside the mouth while eating it. Now, I know what it feels like to eat a stinky gym sock with beans and coconut milk. Yummy.
The locust tea had a floral aroma and it tasted like green tea with a slight anise flavor. Unless you enjoy anise, you won't enjoy this tea. The anise was obvious, but not overbearing. We weren't loving it.
The restaurant name intrigued me. In Vietnamese, the word Oi is used to get the attention of a person in a nice way. It is equivalent to the word, Oh in English. For example, when you want the attention of someone you like, you call out, "Oh darling!" I surmise that the restaurant's name, Pho Saigon Oi, uses Oi as an attention getting postive expression of the word Oh. That reminded me of the movie, When Harry met Sally; where Meg Ryan said, "Oh" repeatedly to Billy Crystal while they were in the deli. Those were positive Ohs and it got lots of attention. In case you don't know what I'm writing about, a link to the movie clip is below.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b0OeM6UUAoI
This restaurant's rating is not useful as a current indicator of it's performance. It is littered with questionable reviews along with old reviews. The key to determining the usefulness of restaurant reviews is to notice how old they are, what details are provided and the type of photos provided. No photos means no proof that they were there. I didn't do a thorough job evaluating the reviews and we ended up with overpriced, middle of the road food with questionable quality and other problems. This restaurant probably had good cooks at one time, but the current group are in need of improvement. They should be required to eat the exact same type of food that they serve. The food might improve quickly. read more