Pho Surpryz Asian Cuisine — Restaurant in Oshawa

I'm going to be completely honest here. I am a bit of a Phờ snob since I grew up on some good Vietnamese Phố at home. Dad owned a Vietnamese restaurant in North York (high Vietnamese population) so will tell you the truth.

I was looking to go to Phờ Việt Nam 999 in Oshawa but they closed early during the long weekend. There had good Vietnamese food.

So we went here, had a higher rating than 999. I was a bit skeptical at first because signs of authentic Vietnamese restaurants will always have Vietnamese either in the sign or the menu.

Shrimp rolls: it was tasty, definitely Dim sum style (frozen) rolls. Sweet and sour sauce wasn't sweet or sour enough and was a bit more watery than it should be. Dripping after the dipping. Edit: Made in house, will up the rating for this. Agreed, most fresh spring rolls are made frozen. I just assumed they were factory made because they were tasty and very crispy! Rice wasn't broken/dried, credit to that.

Phở: The broth was plain, missing a lot of ingredients. I don't taste the ginger or the 5 spices. Not much fish sauce flavours in this either. Good news for those who aren't M.S.G. fans, they don't seem to use a lot of that here based on the flavours of the soup. They were missing flank in their special. The meat quality wasn't great and the rare beef was fully cooked before it even came out. Lacks side veggies. The bean sprout should be on the side not added straight to the bowl already. I had to add a lot of hoisin and Sriracha to finish up my noodles. Edit: veggies are served on the side to keep the broth hot.

Lemongrass Beef rice: 1st red flag with this, apparently they had an option to add fried egg for extra but typically this should be added or have an option with it. There were no offer of side of soup with rice (this is traditional in authentic restaurants to help digest the dried rice). The lemongrass Beef needed more lemongrass. It seemed it wasn't grilled, but pan grilled/fried with a heap of oil. The flavours wasn't too bad, but it wasn't flavourful enough for a Vietnamese standard.

Again these are just my opinion. The reviews seem to have a lot of great ones. My feedback is based on my wide variety of Vietnamese food and experiences.

If you are curious about trying Vietnamese food in Oshawa, best place I would recommend is Phờ Việt Nam 999. Authentic. A lot of options.

Service is good. The Owner is friendly based on the response. I've updated my rating from 2 to 3 stars. Thank you for...

This is the first time visiting this resturant. Im rating the resturant a 2 star because of not the service. The server was great and very friendly. Apparently, she was also the owner. Very friendly to talk to. Now the reason for 2 stars is because of the overall cleanliness and food quality. Dont get me wrong, the food quality is reviewed on one-time experience only. The male toilet had leaking drain pipes under handwash, and the urinal had a garbage bin under to collect the water. Cleanliness really matters when it comes to resuturant business. This makes me wonder how the kitchen would be if the front facing is not up to the par. The food service was quick. We ordered 2 of their lunch special, chicken satay and padthai, but the padthai had hair in the chicken. It may be a one off situation but when you find hair in your dish it's not soo cool. Hopefully they take care next time before cooking and serving.

Editing/ Adding this based on the owners response below. Without asking the owner provided the lunch rate which was a great gesture. However to say that there was a lot of water left was not right as we didn't come to take a shower there. Also fixing a leaky sink might solve the issue. To say that the food which had hair in it was finished 80% is not right. The fact is that nobody is digging to see if hair or any other surprise is there or not. Unfortunately we found the hair when the food was at 80% it could have been at 20 or 50% the fact is that there was hair. The response below is negative instead of acknowledging and fixing the issues and making the customer experience better , which would...

This is not Thai food.

The flavour profiles remind me of The Pickle Barrel trying to do Thai food.

Sure, some people might like it. But if you’re looking for familiar tasting Thai comfort food, you should go elsewhere. Nothing tastes like it’s supposed to (and not in a good, experimental way either).

The Pad Thai is blood red, and tastes a little bit like ketchup. It had lots of small pieces of something that was hard to chew. The beef was over seasoned, and done so with a seasoning that reminded me more of Chinese food than Thai.

(Btw, if you’re thinking of just trying the curry pad Thai instead, don’t. It’s not good).

Pad Thai is one of my tried and true go to’s, but I would never order this again.

The red curry smells like curry, but does not taste like it. The flavour is quite watered down by veggies that I rarely see in a Thai style curry (like blanched broccoli, onion, pepper). There’s also no pineapple in their red curry.

The mango salad was the only thing that I liked, but they used over ripened orange mangos instead of green mangos, which really disappointed my wife.

Although I wanted to, I’m not giving this restaurant 1 star because (A) it’s a family owned restaurant, and I don’t want to drag their average down too much, and (b) they are primarily a pho restaurant, and I didn’t try any of their Viet dishes.

But make no mistake, this is not good Thai food. If you’re looking for pad Thai that tastes like pad Thai, look elsewhere.

Maybe...