Beyond Pho Halifax — Restaurant in Halifax

I went here by recommendation of my neighbour who said this new place has the best pho in Halifax. I love pho so I went there ASAP.

Upon sitting down their robot server brought water— it’s a gimmicky thing that kids like but doesn’t really affect the service you receive since wait staff need to place it on table for you. Also, the decor is very pretty!

We ordered the house special pho: I’d say meat was good quality, but the soup itself was a bit bland and not seasoned well enough with the aromatics. Additional pho noodle was $2 and it came with more soup which was great.

Also had salad rolls: The sauce for the salad rolls tasted very sweet — seemed like it was mostly peanut butter and sugar with a tiny bit of fish sauce — it wasn’t good. Also my roll consisted of shrimp and Romain lettuce— it was a really weak attempt at a salad roll.

We also had the vermicelli with beef and spring roll: The vermicelli didn’t have enough sauce, we asked for more and they were great and brought out more. The beef slices were large and not cut well so they were stuck together and you had to have an ungracefully large bite of beef. The spring roll was tasty but not cut apart so you couldn’t really share it.

And their calamari was really… bad. It came with ketchup so it basically tasted like fishy onion rings. It seemed like some generic frozen calamari you get in bulk. I used the extra vermicelli sauce which made it taste a whole lot better.

Their hot Vietnamese coffee was great! The cold one was the same as the hot except you get cold coconut milk— it made the drink a bit too weak for my liking.

Also had the mango coconut sticky rice— would have been great if the rice was fully cooked— mine could have used an extra 5 minutes in the steamer. The mango on top was perfectly ripe and cut beautifully, presentation was great.

Update 2023: Tried their beef pho again, soup had flavour this time but meat quantity and quality is not the best in town (pho maniac still wins)

Original post 2022: Overall: If I had to come back I’d get the vermicelli bowl (make sure to ask for extra sauce), spring rolls and hot Vietnamese coffee but maybe go elsewhere for pho, salad rolls and coconut sticky rice. I wouldn’t say this place was very authentic or affordable. Waitstaff were very friendly but not...

Might be used to Toronto sushi but I'd have to say this sushi is subpar. Rolls were filled with too much rice and "crisp". Rolls were a bit haphazardly put together as well. They tasted fine though.

All of the kitchen food with sauce seemed to have a tangy bbq sauce type flavour to it (even the kalbi) which definitely wasn't Japanese although I shouldn't say it was objectively bad (even though it wasn't to my liking).

Only 2 flavours of ice cream on a give day but it tasted good enough.

Service was kind of what you expect at an all you can eat place but I got everything I ordered even if it did take quite a while for the "specialty" rolls (e.g. black dragons and such). They say 10-15 min wait but it was like 1/2 an hour and asking a 2nd time for me to get mine.

Sashimi isn't included which sucks but this place is cheaper than the other all you can eat places around here so it's more understandable.

The tempura and calamari were pretty good though.

Overall, mediocre. Would give it a 2 1/2 if I was allowed to. I'll try the other AYCE places around first so I doubt I'll be coming back here again soon but if I do I might be a bit more generous with my grading once I know what to compare to around here.

Update: Tried this place a couple more times. That weird BBQ flavour is gone from the kalbi (still fairly fatty but prepared correctly now). Rolls weren't as bad as the 1st time. This may be due to me lowering my expectations around here but I think it's better than my first impression. Still very mediocre and there are better AYCE sushi places around so I probably won't be coming back...

I don't like placing bad reviews, but I did not like this place. I'll never be back or suggest someone to go. First I thought the food was fairly tasteless. There wasn't anything special to it. The service for food was fast, which is appreciated. Didn't like the rice either. The texture was fairly dry. Though we had to ask to get wasabi and ginger. Wasn't even brought with the sushi, which is kind of a standard. Then the service didn't make it better. They dropped a plate on the table, which broke my water glass. (I understand mistakes happen, but it wasn't handled properly). There was glass everywhere. In our food, our drinks, on us... They cleaned it up fine, but never offered us towel to clean up ourselves. They didn't even removed everything from the table! We still has items with glass in it that we found later. We didn't get a replacement for the food and drinks that they had to remove because there was shattered glass in it. We were a group and when someone asked for the bills, they brought them to only half the table... We waited another 10min before we were finally able to get someone to bring us the rest of the bills so we can leave with our group. (The first waitress we asked never brought us our bills even after 5min). Sadly, even though I like sushi, issues weren't handled correctly, service was poor and the food wasn't anything special. Just a bad...