Pho Daddy — Restaurant in Calgary

I have now eaten at this place three times now. I have eaten the beef pho, beef brisket, beef noodle bowl and the chicken pho. Firstly I must commend the owner for bringing a new innovative halal product to Calgary food scene. It is nice to have a halal option that does not revolve around shawarma, pizza, donair, fried chicken, burger, Desi or Indo Chinese food. Finally someone took a a bold step. I have lived in south east Asia for 25 years and I am very familiar with Thai, Malay, Indonesian, burmese and Vietnamese cuisine. I have read others review there two extremes ones that rate it very high and ones that rate it very low. I notice ones rate it very low we're mostly Asians which is something for owners to consider seriously. I can appreciate their feedback but I feel a lot of them are being slightly harsh. The basic ingredients and recipe is authentic but I would have to agree with some that the broth can be improved. Usually the beef broth has a certain depth in terms of fragrance and volume to them more than chicken. The beef has darker slightly color than chicken. So they should separate the broth for chicken and beef don't use the same broth. If they want to take this broth to next level they need to have following broth options , a. Beef b. Chicken c. Vegie d. Sea food. The sea food use fresh sea food NOT the frozen ones from the freezer in Costco or wall Mart. There plenty of Asian shops that ruin the sea food option by using frozen sea food. The fresh sea food released the oil and flavor into the broth which is essential. The shrimp head butter is essential . Make the sea food pho with the Thai tom yum flavor touch. In the beef pho a meat ball option should be there. Make fresh halal beef meat ball is easy. Just YouTube it you will get tons of recipe. The staff are very nice and the manager was receptive to comments. We spoke at length at the store and he was not defensive in anyway. Which is a great sign of good attitude and desire to do better. So those who gave super low ratings should actually sit with manager or write a more meaningful feedback than just saying it is not good. This is a honest and sincere attempt and they have done a fair job at execution. If this was Saigon I would have given them a 3/5 but this is Calgary so I must say comparatively they do give you good taste of what a pho taste like and it is better than many other pho shops I have eaten at across canada. For effort , for professionalism for creativity I must rate this place a 4/5. They have potential to do much better. One thing they did brilliantly is small menu and they focus on making their product better and they make it all infront of you. Which is nice for customers to see where their food came from and it shows transparency from the owner side. One more suggestion is to have seating more comfortable for kids and family to come together. The seats are mostly like a bar style stools and elevated couches. I wish the pho daddy team all the best. Thank them for the effort, boldness to enter this market and providing a halal option. I will keep coming back and I hope to see things get better. I would ask pho daddy to introduce Thai beef noodles and thai Tom yum noodles soups. Thai broth takes pho to another level. Nobody in Calgary serves halal Thai. Be the first to serve halal Thai noodles. There is also the Thai muslim/Malay beef noodle soup which has coconut curry base similar to laksa but much lighter. Amazing...

I walk by here every day with my dog and the smells down on the sidewalk level smell so good. I’ve never been able to go in as I have a dog with me. Due to those delicious smells tonight I thought I would order and was very excited anticipating a delicious soup. Unfortunately and sadly I’m left feeling disappointed. I didn’t get to sample broths so was ordering blindly but thought traditional would be a good start. I’m an adult male who’s quite active and need a large meal so I went for the large size (at a $4 up charge) chicken soup. Order arrived within 20 minutes. Upon opening it the broth container wasn’t full, the noodle portion was small, the sprout portion was suffice, but there were no other vegetables as mentioned in the description of the soup. Just some basil. I went looking for the chicken and found it in the broth, scooped it up and it’s the smallest little portion of thin shaved chicken. Fit in the palm of your hand. I put the soup together feeling disappointed then took a bite. The broth was not great either - lacking flavor and seasoning. So, I spent $20 on a bowl of soup making sure to order the large so I would be full and I’m not full, have to find something else to eat, and disappointed I spent my money here. By the size of that soup I’m going to assume that they didn’t notice I paid for a large and I got the regular portions. I will also say I can’t speak to the other broths as I didn’t get to try them. I will add, if you want a stellar chicken pho, go to CoDo on 17th ave - you get easily %50 larger portion, the broth is insanely good, full flavored, you don’t need to add anything, you get about a half of chicken breast of meat in it and its $14. Money...

People giving this place 5 stars, I guess I just had a terrible experience. Came to the front till. Stood there for almost 10 mins while they kept on making and dealing with TO GO orders only. I was never greeted or acknowledge in any way. Then when he finally came up to the till he says, "what can I get for you?" No apologies or anything nice to say. I responded and mentioned that I never been here before and I wasn't sure what to get. He didn't offered any suggestions or said anything. (I browse their menu online on my phone while I was waiting for so a long) I ended up picking the Large premium soup with beef and a soda.

I wanted to sit down while I waited, but the only two tables available had dirty dishes on them still from the previous customer. (That's fine, they are busy. Totally understandable) I sat there anyways while I waited. 5-7mins later my soup came. That's really good time to be honest. The soup was lacking flavor. It tasted like it had only been on the stove for minutes. (As a former Chef and Sous, I know) Noodle portion not consistent with its large size bowl, too small. Beef portion was good. My bean sprouts portion was small too and inside my soup. The lime was pre-squeeze and floating in my soup. I had to get up and ask for sauces. None given or offered. What a disappointing experience. I really wanted this place to be hood so bad. I wanted this to be my new spot since I live blocks away from here.

I want to give this place another try just because it could just be a one off. This could be a case of the team not firing at all cylinders but the actual stablishment is good. Just the team not having a good day and maybe...