The pictures and other reviews made this place sound great, and I love good Vietnamese food, but until they get their kitchen situation sorted, I'll take a hard pass at this one.
We came in at 1:00 (we thought after the lunch rush would be less crowded). Looks like your no frills pho place, nothing remarkable about the decor. We were seated, we ordered drinks and about 10 after the hour, we ordered food. We watched as everyone around us was served, even the people who came in 20 minutes AFTER us. I ordered shrimp spring rolls and bun (vermacelli with pork) my friend ordered chicken pho, and another the pork sandwich, and the beef stew along with fried eggrolls.
At 1:50 we still hadn't gotten the broth or spring rolls ordered, and we were about to get up and leave (we'd already asked 2x if there was a problem) when the rolls and broth came out. We kept hearing the food would be up soon. First the spring rolls, absolutely NO greens inside. All noodles, and 3 shrimp that's it. They fall apart, and were inedible. Two people got the fried eggrolls, but both got different sauce with their order and the eggrolls were tiny and tasteless.
At 2:00 we finally got our food. It's PHO people, it's SOUP. It's some pork on some noodles, and a pork sandwich. What about that would take 50 minutes to cook? The vermacelli was terrible. I asked for the spicy version and it was tasteless. The pork was so fried to a crisp the few pieces there were, were slivers. The chicken Pho was tasteless and bland. No flavor. The beef stew was fine, and the chicken was fine, but they had to get it to go because we ran out of time for lunch by 2:10.
I am giving it one star for the service, because those waiters would have probably went in the kitchen to cook if they could have. They were stuck dealing with several angry customers whose food took too long to cook. We asked what happened to the waiter because he was obviously a good waiter, and we had a feeling it wasn't him that was the problem. He apologized again, and said they only had 2 cooks and it was busy, and I asked point blank "Are they new?" He admitted yes, one was.
While I don't want to penalize someone who's new and learning, I would hope that there would be SOMEONE experienced in the kitchen to oversee the food going out. That was not happening.
We won't be back, there are other places to try, and I'd rather not chance it until the cooks are better. read more