Pho East Lake Restaurant — Restaurant in Airdrie

We’ve been looking for good Vietnamese food since we moved to Airdrie. This was our least favourite restaurant so far. The food was fresh, but the dishes were primarily made of noodles. I’m baffled how this restaurant has any good reviews.

We ordered a variety of dishes. We started with vegetable salad rolls. We received 3 tiny rolls that were rice noodles wrapped in rice wrappers. I couldn’t find any bean sprouts, carrots, or cucumbers in them, and they had very little lettuce. They were vegetable rolls, so I expected them to have some vegetables, but they only had flavourless rice noodles with a tiny bit of lettuce, and no meat.

My husband ordered wonton and egg noodle soup. He added 4 wontons for $2.75, and he added barbecue pork for $3.00 (the soup only came with 4 small pieces of undercooked pork for the $3.00). It was a large bowl of watery broth with some egg noodles, 6 wontons in total (so it only came with 2 wontons and he paid for 4 more). There were a few fresh vegetables, but it was mostly watery broth, with some egg noodles. Wonton soup should have wontons in it, without having to pay extra for them. He was expecting a hearty soup, because he paid extra for wontons and barbecue pork, but he mostly had watery broth with some noodles.

I ordered charbroiled beef and spring roll vermicelli. The spring rolls were nice - the best part of our meals, but it was mostly noodles with no flavour. There were no bean sprouts, no carrots, and only a tiny bit of lettuce. The charbroiled beef tasted like it was boiled. It was flavourless. I’ve never had vermicelli that was primarily noodles. I’ve never had it without carrots or bean sprouts. The meat was bland, and the Nước chấm sauce tasted like water with a tiny bit of sugar in it. I couldn’t taste...

I wanted to share my recent experience at your restaurant in the hope that it can be addressed. I previously ordered from your restaurant and enjoyed the food, so I decided to bring my family (a table of 4) for a dine-in experience. Unfortunately, our visit was disappointing due to poor customer service and cleanliness.

When we arrived, we were asked to sit at a dirty table. It was only cleaned after we sat down. We then requested booster chairs and extra seats, but the staff ignored us. After waiting for about five minutes, same staff member came over, rudely dropped the menus, and asked if we had ordered—without any greeting or courtesy. When we mentioned that we still hadn’t received the chairs, she rolled her eyes, moaned, and dismissively pointed at some chairs nearby. She never took the order eather and just left.

While the food was decent, the atmosphere and service were severely lacking. A restaurant experience is not just about food but also about how customers are treated. We left without ordering ( disgusting, filthy booster seats for the kids)

I hope you take this feedback seriously and address these issues to improve...

Horrible experience!! Ordered a 'CHARBROILED CHICKEN' and got cold boiled chicken chopped into small pieces with a strange fish sauce. Disgusting!

Complained that the order was incorrect as the menu item described it as charbroiled. Argued with the owner for 15 minutes over what the difference between charbroiled and boiled is. We turned down a replacement meal as we would have to wait another 20 minutes and they still charged us for a meal we did not order.

So, when you order from the menu, you have a very high chance that you will not get what the photo looks like (small chopped up beef balls as opposed to what the photos look like) and when the menu description is.

MANY other high quality restaurants around you can dine in without having an argument in front of other customers. Embarrassing to say the least. Never...