Nam Richmondhill — Restaurant in Richmond Hill

Food was phenomenal, but I wish I could give the owner or manager a resounding ZERO.

There was a black wet stain on the side of my Bun Bo Hue noodle soup bowl, it appeared to be perhaps ink, or soot from the grill, or paint, not a condiment you would find in a Vietnamese restaurant.

When I asked the staff member what it was, they called the manager(?) over, and he started aggressively trying to gaslight me into thinking that the substance was a sauce that I know for certain does not go into Bun Bo Hue. He did not take my concern even remotely seriously and began taking a very aggressive attitude towards me.

I asked to see the sauce, and he said that they couldn't take the sauce out of the kitchen. I then went up to see a view of the kitchen, and he pointed out that it was in a bottle with what seemed to be a black-looking sauce. I asked if he could dispense some of it onto a small sauce dish to look at, and he refused, saying that it was against the "policy." At this point, things seemed very, very fishy.

Seeing as how he couldn't bring the sauce outside, I asked if I could go inside to see the sauce. He brought me into the kitchen, where I was looking for other potential sources of the black substance. I saw a grill top being used to blacken some meat and took a mental snapshot of that. He proceeded to take the bottle in question and squirt out into a bowl. Guess what? A see-through light brown liquid, not resembling the pitch-black inky substance that was still coating the edge of the bowl. When I pointed out the marked difference, he tripled down on his position, saying, "That is what the sauce looks like when cooked."

Since I was entrenched in my position on this, he offered to have the dish on the house, but that was not really my concern. Naturally, I was instead worried that I may have ingested something poisonous. He assured me that because the restaurant had been "running for 10 years, " they were "very safety." He ultimately never took the concern very seriously.

However, after further talks, he DID agree to take any and all responsibility should I have gotten sick, as well as offered compensation for the entire meal. Unfortunately, this was less than genuine as it seemed he acquiesced only wanting us to leave, to avoid my party potentially causing further disturbance to the business, that he brought on himself with the awful attitude.

The issue was NOT with the service staff, food, or atmosphere, all of which I and the company found very stellar. The issue was simply the poor attitude of the owner(?) and getting overly aggressive right out of the gates, maintaining that aggressive stance, lacking any semblance of composure, and flat out lying about the nature of the substance, or at the very least, not entertaining the possibility that it COULD HAVE been something hazardous for one's health.

I have seen other poor reviews with similar sentiments about the manager. I hope that he can improve his behavior to match the excellent quality of their food. Stay...

Vietnamese food and pho have become a staple in Toronto for decades, there are many Vietnamese restaurants around however, none of them is quite hitting the spot, until I tried Nam's Pho Tai and Bun Bo Hue. Thanks to my friend and in-laws recommendation, I finally find the Pho for my likings.

The Pho Tai here was full of flavours, that you can smell it from afar, the spice in the soup was prominence, cinnamon and star anise scent were strong. The beef here was thin, silky and easy to chew. Beef meatballs has a chewy texture with tendon bits in it, just like how they do it in Vietnam.

The Bun Bo Hue was also a strong contestant, mildly spicy, beautifully coloured by Annatto seeds, most importantly they have put shrimp paste broth into the soup base which is very authentic, you can definitely taste a hint of seafood flavour and it gave the soup an extra dimension. It has all the essential toppings for Bun Bo Hue: Vietnamese luncheon meat, beef brisket slices, port trotter and most importantly the pork blood, many restaurants don't have that here in Toronto. It is the best Bun Bo Hue I had so far, even better than in Hanoi. Gotta mention their herb plate, they have shredded banana blossom, it is quite usual in Vietnam, however you don't usually see them in many Vietnamese restaurants here.

The spring roll was also good, they used the rice paper for the skin which is authentic, many restaurants here in Toronto used the Chinese spring roll skin that is a totally different animal. I would like their dipping sauce to be a bit more sour and savoury tho, but all in all it was a very enjoyable spring roll.

Nam is the best Vietnamese cuisine I have tried so far, very authentic. Staff seems to be all Vietnamese and many customers are Vietnamese descents. It is a good sign that they are doing the right thing. I have already decided what to have next time I'm here.

2nd visit: 2 days after, I just can't wait to have some more, we went there with our parents and we had the soft shell crab noodles and Bo Kho (tomato beef stew) with rice noodles. Both are excellent, the Bun Rieu (crab and pork noodles soup) was lighter on palate, the Bo Kho was full of flavour and depth, the beef chunks were soft and fell apart in mouth, highly recommended.

We also tried their deep fried chicken wing with honey and lemon, they were not bad, quite interesting flavour, you should try it of you felt the...

The restaurant has gone much worse after it went through a change of hands, which is sad because it was one of our favorite Viet restaurant in town. The service is horrible, we went at 3pm when it wasn’t even busy (2 tables waiting to be served and 1 take out), there were 3 staff at the front but they were all hanging out at the cashier. We got ignored when we asked for high chair so we ended up getting it ourselves. The servers barely smiled the whole time, when I asked for menu the server just gave me a straight face while pointing at the plexiglass with the QR code sticked on it: “You order there.” was all he said. When the order came, we got 3 bowls of pho’s (there were only two of us). We informed the server, this time he showed an annoyed face and told us this is what we ordered. I insisted that we would have ordered two, only need two and not going to take the third one, he just said nothing and walked away. Then we told him again to take it away, so he finally did without saying anything. The sliced beef was actually pretty good (hence earn the 1 star) and somehow my wife got a generous portion of beef. This is the only time we have more beef than pho in a bowl, more on that later. I ordered the house special and had 2-3 slices of beef (good as well) along with 2 pieces of beef ball, 1 piece of tendon, 2 pieces of tripes, 1 slice of brisket, note every “piece” was about the size of one section of pinky finger. In terms of the pho, for the reference we ordered LARGE (they have only med or large to choose from, no XL) and the pho in each bowl was not even enough to fill a small white bowl (see photo). I finished all the pho in 2 slurps. The broth is salty and not much beef bone flavor to it. The utensils and table were not clean. When it was under previous ownership the place wasn’t very clean neither, but now it’s just worse. I suggest you better stop reading now and...