Phở Hồng Vietnamese Restaurant — Restaurant in Burnaby

It seems like Pho Hong Vietnamese Restaurant has existed for years. The exterior isn't much to look at... it actually reminds me of an old house (complete will bars on the windows).

It's been a number of years since I last visited this place. From what I remembered, service was spotty at best here and my visit in late February confirmed that things haven't really changed much over the years. To be fair, service appeared a bit friendlier for regular patrons and it depended on who was serving you.

The interior is laid out in a utilitarian manner with a combination of tables and booths set up in a grid pattern that takes up the entire room. Off the entrance is a small cashier area where you go to pay (cash or debit only). The restaurant filled up by noon so it's still popular with many people.

On my first revisit, I ordered the Bun Bo Hue ($9 for large) which contained beef, Vietnamese ham, and chicken balls. There was plenty of thinly cut beef (which wasn't too tender) as well as tender, thick, round rice vermicelli noodles.

On a subsequent revisit, I ordered the Bun Thit Nuong, Cha Gio ($11.95). This is a popular dish consisting of grilled lemongrass pork with rice vermicelli and deep-fried spring roll. I had a different waitress on this visit and service was a bit better. This was a very large bowl and was quite filling. They don't use rice paper wrapper in their spring rolls (which was a bit of a disappointment to me) but it wasn't too bad and was freshly fried with a tightly packed filling. I found that the grilled pork, which had some fatty bits in it, was just okay and had a bit of char to some of the pieces. The fish sauce lacks flavour but this is a filling dish if you're looking for something to satisfy your hunger.

On my subsequent revisit, I ordered the Lemongrass Chicken with Rice ($10.50) which turned out better than the lemongrass pork. Too bad it didn't come with a spring roll. The chicken had a nice char on it but the meat tended to be on the dry side. Don't even bother with the tomato because that really wasn't very good. Like all of my other meals here, the portion size is very generous.

Overall, the food here is fairly average in terms of Vietnamese food with more focus put on giving you large serving sizes instead of flavour. The soup noodles come out very quick but the grilled items take a bit longer to come out.

Update Jul 2024: It's been about 5 years since my last visit here. Some of the changes I noticed is they moved the location of the cashier from the front and they accept credit card now.

We had the mango green tea and passion fruit green tea ($4.5 each) as well as the butter garlic chicken wings ($12.25) and the beef carpaccio ($13.99).

Chicken wings were nice and crispy but really lacked the butter garlic sauce (it came served with a standard sweet chili dipping sauce).

The beef carpaccio really didn't look anything like I expected. Instead of rare beef, the beef was fully cooked and seemed to be the beef they use for their pho dishes. While the flavour wasn't bad, it's a crime to call this carpaccio. We wound up taking it home and repurposing it for homemade pho.

We also ordered the deep fried fish cakes ($12.25). The fish cakes were light and bouncy to the bite. One of the better items we had...

We used to eat here for over 5 years. It was such a great experience for us, but sadly, the experience has declined after a while. The staff have become so rude that it has become unbearable. Ignoring your requests and brushing things off. They don't even bother to clean up after their messes, clean up the bathrooms, clean the utensils or do any work!! The restaurant has recently renovated into something real ugly, so now it looks like trash inside. Food is bland, effortless, and tasteless. The 5-star reviews aren't very accurate, or don't even explain why the place is receiving 5 stars!! Unreliable reviews. Design - Empty, disgusting, disorganized. Recently went through a renovation. Restaurant looked perfectly fine before, but they thought it would be a good idea to completely renovate. Utensils - Always dirty, we can't even use them without cleaning them beforehand because it seemed as if they didn't even clean the utensils. Bathrooms - disgusting! Always dirty, with toilet paper on the floor and smells weird in there. Food - bland, unauthentic, disgusting! Pile of mush. Staff - always so rude, frowny and ignoring your requests. For example, when asking for something like a fork or scissors, they seem nice and seem to acknowledge your request, but they later ignore it (intentionally too! They said it would be there shortly!!). One staff member, in particular is...

This Pho Place is the true definition of a bad restaurant! (Rude staff, sub-par food, dirty etc.) The restaurants problems:

Staff like to brush off and ignore your requests. They like saying that something you ask for will be there but they never give it. This happens every time. One time in particular, we asked for forks and scissors because some of us didn't know how to use chopsticks or preferred not to. Not only did they rudely give us attitude as an answer to our request, but they also lied to us by saying it would "come shortly", but it took forever. When it finally did come (after a few reminders), they also gave us attitude when we said thanks! Wow, if the waiter is reading this, you are priceless! 🙄

Dirty restaurant, utensils aren't clean, the layout of the restaurant is not pleasant, the bathrooms are dirty! Also, didn't you have a good design before? Let me ask you a question then: why did you change that? No wonder this place has declined.

Bland Food. The soup was under-seasoned and did not taste flavorful, unlike other pho places!

Reviews are unreliable. People post 5-star ratings that are blank! That's right, they don't even provide evidence of their "good experience"! Funny thing is that they posted 5-star blank ratings right after I posted this review. Read some real reviews and then you'll see how terrible...