Saigon Boy Noodle House — Restaurant in Ottawa

Honestly, this place doesn't deserve any stars at all. Not sure how it earned its 4.6/5 rating. Food was very average and the service was possibly the worst I've ever experienced. Fair warning that this is a pretty long review because this is a recount of what happened. While I know most people won't read this, I hope those of you wanting to know about my full, atrocious experience with this place will keep reading.

My mom and I were craving some good pho so we went online and found this shop with an impressive 4.6 rating with over 200+ reviews. We went all the way to Chinatown only to find a very small store with just one person that acted as host, waitress and cashier. When we sat down, the first red flag was the unclean teacups (random specks of gunk). We thought, whatever, it's a small store. Then we realized that there was no wifi. Again, it's a small store so we didn't think much.

Then when we were ready to order, we waved around and called out like crazy for at least 10 minutes trying to get the waitress's attention (there were only about 3-4 other tables with customers at the time). We ended up getting stared at by the other customers, but still didn't get her attention. In such a small sized restaurant, one would think that a waitress should be observant enough to notice us right??

If it stopped there, we would've just let things slide with a 4/5 rating. Unfortunately, when our beef wrap appetizer came, the waitress held the plate at a questionable angle and dropped the food. So, we decided that we didn't want it anymore, but before we even had a chance to say anything to her, she scurried off without a word. Around this time, the restaurant owner came out, but no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't get his attention despite, again, the tiny size of the place. After at least 5 minutes of calling out and waving, I had to walk up to the counter. By then, my mom and I were already feeling pretty irritated with the service, so we were just hoping the food would be good.

When we finally received our order, we found a long piece of hair entangled in my mom's noodle soup. We were absolutely disgusted. So, we tried to get the waitress's attention again about the hair, but of course she was completely oblivious. Another customer ended up having to call out with us to get her attention.

After waiting a while, I went up to the counter to ask how much longer my mom would have to wait for her noodle soup (we gave up on getting service from our seats). When the waitress went to the kitchen, I caught a glimpse of a worker. Her hair was loosely tied back and not even held together by a net, just a very small cap that covered 50% of the top of her head.

I won't even get started with the owner's attitude when we were paying. Overall, we found the taste very average. Nothing even close to being worthy of a 4.6 rating. We've definitely had much better and more authentic pho at lower rated and cheaper places. What completely ruined our experience was the absolutely horrendous service. We wouldn't recommend this place to anyone and definitely won't return. We hope no one else will have to experience such a catastrophe on a Sunday night.

To those that read all the way to this paragraph: thanks for taking the time to read my terribly long rant (might as well call it an...

I've been here many, many times before but today's experience was terrible. The food has always been good in the past although the service has always been more of a miss than a hit. Today everything was a miss unfortunately. We were a party of four and despite their being only seven other people in the restaurant, many of which already had their food, it took over half an hour to receive ours. One thing this restaurant always does is serves each person at the table separately. One dish comes out, then three to four minutes later the next one comes, and so on and so forth. Therefore, it takes well over ten minutes for a table of four to all receive their dishes. Restaurant rule 101 is to try to serve everyone at a given table at the same time. I can understand there being issues if the restaurant is short staffed, but they weren't. At one point, there were four staff out front and a couple in the kitchen with only fifteen diners. Now to the food, and truly the worst part of the experience. Two of the plates were prepared nicely as was the case on previous visits so a couple of my friends had decent food. But two plates were completely unacceptable. One of those had chicken that was burnt, about 40% of the chicken serving was like that. The other had completely RAW shrimp. When we pointed it out, they said it was fine. Now, just because I'm eating out, it doesn't mean I don't know how to cook lol. It's pretty simple to tell when shrimp is raw. It's absolutely unacceptable to serve a dish that way, not to mention the rawness of the shrimp can contaminate the rest of the items of the dish. The reaction of staff and management was nonchalant and they tried to justify how it was prepared and said we should have asked for it well done. That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever been told in a restaurant! Needless to say, despite many previous good experiences with the food, returning won't happen anytime soon. It's time for them to learn how to be consistent with their food preparation and to provide patrons with efficient and...

• Solid 4.5 Stars *

Toronto pho connoisseur in Ottawa looking for a pho fix. Decided on Saigon Boy due to the close proximity to my downtown hotel, positive reviews, and the fact that they have beef tendon. Lesser pho restaurants don't offer tendon and mostly stick to rare beef, brisket, and beef balls so I knew they were more on the "authentic" side. I arrived on a Saturday evening in the thick of dinner hour. The restaurant was full and they had a party of 4 waiting for a table - a good sign. Thankfully they had a small table available and I was able to be seated immediately.

I ordered a medium size rare beef and tendon pho. I felt the topping portions were generous and did not feel as though they skimped out at all. The rare beef was some of the best I've had - well sliced thin and very tender. The tendon was also perfect bite sized, very tender and delicious. The broth was on the lighter side from what I am used to - it could've used a touch more salt to suit my taste. I added some table black pepper to perk up my broth.

My only very minor and picky criticisms: they don't serve sawtooth coriander with the basil and beansprouts they don't use authentic Huy Fong sriracha sauce - it was some other sriracha that is spicier than Huy Fong which I didn't mind at all

Cash and debit only. Ample...