The Grand Buddha Bistro — Restaurant in Castlegar

Was craving some of my favs and haven't been in a very long time so me and my girlfriend decided on a night out tonight. Big feature on the menu was the deep fried chestnut pork but we were told they didn't have it.. No biggie, that happens. My fav starter is the pork spring rolls so we added and extra one and had those. Delicious however we were a bit confused as there didn't seem to be any pork in them, just veggies. We both ordered pho, she the big wonton and me the special. As hers came out, I took one look and thought it looked really weird, it isn't normally that colour... But maybe they changed it up. Then came mine, same colour... So black you couldn't see the veggies or other ingredients. We both thought that was weird as bone broth (the base for these soups) is almost clear and even when boiled long, still translucent. This was like an entire bottle of soy sauce was dumped in the bowl and heated up. The broth was so salty it had brined everything in the bowl from the rice noodles to the meats and veggies. I added my chili oil hoping it would help the saltiness (now I live me some salt and soy, but this was excessive even for me) but to no avail. After a couple of spoonfuls, we deterwit was inedible. I decided to take the "ingredients" from mine home and add them to new broth and hopeeit would be edible. We discussed this with the server who apologized and went to ask the kitchen about the soy. She came back telling us that there was no soy sauce in the dish, it was simply how long it was boiled that made it that colour and everyone's taste was different and could handle diffelsvels of saltiness... A load of b's in other words. Now the price for these soups is close to $30 a bowl and I normally don't mind paying that as I know what time it takes to make a good bone broth, but as this broth was inedible and there was effort made to compensate for that (even if it was a "please one back tomorrow to speak to the manager/owner). It unfortunately means that this restaurant will no longer be recommended by me or my girlfriend to our many groups. Side note... We weren't the only ones in there complaining tonight, the table behind us had an issue with thier bubble tea that was also brushed...

This restaurant has potential but needs work on its service. Food was decent, but the service was poor. There were 7 tables of people at dinner and 3 servers and what should have been an hour experience turned into over 2 hours. The service was so slow. It took quite some time for anyone to come to our table and the only words spoken were “are you ready?” Then the server did not answer our questions about their alcohol selection and we were told to go over and look at the bar ourselves. Drinks took about 15 minutes to arrive, food about 45, cutlery another 5 minutes after our food came out. I noticed this was the same for every table. Very slow, bare minimum service. And once we were eating, no one came over to check on us for quite sometime after we were done and waiting for takeout containers. Tables all had empty dishes and drinks and were getting ignored. The service needs to learn how to hustle even just a little bit. It has an atmosphere where the customer is an annoyance, which is too bad because the food was pretty good....

Save your money folks! I ordered a pho deluxe for take out, when I got home there was paper in the soup broth which I just dismissed as no big deal, but then I tasted it and it tasted like water with absolutely no traditional seasonings whatsoever, it was gross. I also added chilli oil to my order and it had no chillies in it and it wasn’t even spicy??? I phoned in to speak with someone about it because I know it’s nothing like I’ve had there before or else I wouldn’t have gone back; the lady told me that there was nothing wrong with it blah blah blah, I said that even though I live a ways away I would come back and bring the soup back for a refund. She told me next time they will give me 20% off …. What help is that when I just spent almost 30 dollars on a bowl of soup thats inedible ? The new owners obviously don’t care about the quality of food they are serving because the quality has gone way downhill along with the service. I won’t be using that 20% off because I won’t be back. Go to tacos el...