Pho 37 — Restaurant in Richmond

I really like all the food here and they plate up very appetizing looking dishes. The takeout is less impactful visually so I really look forward to when I feel comfortable eating inside again. Got two of the Medium Rare Beef Noodle Soup and the Charbroiled Lemongrass Chicken on Rice. The soup comes as usual and there is plenty of beef. The picture of the beef slices you see is half of what was in one order so you get a lot. Pho 37 adds a little more to the chicken as you can see from the darker colour. Like the pho, you get a lot of chicken-two large thick pieces. Both are good value and taste.

Another visit for the #21 Charbroiled Lemongrass Chicken and Spring Rolls and the #40 Tuan's Special Beef Noodle Soup. As usual, both dishes looked great. Also as usual, lots of protein. Two large pieces of chicken in the vermicelli bowl. I had read that the soup was smoked but the actually toss some ingredients in a wok first to give is a smoky flavour. The soup base is the same but with the added ingredients even more delicious. Pho 37's soup is great-not too salty and not too thin. #40 just amps up all the flavours. It has rare beef, brisket, and meatballs, bit I ordered without the rare beef. There was a great amount of both brisket and meatballs and the meat on the plate is after I ate half of the meat in the bowl! The soup had pieces of ginger and sliced garlic in it as well. The poached egg was nice to mix in with everything. It is my new favourite soup here. They do not have the 'book' menu with pictures now, just the same one for take out. I did not notice if the menu was...

Beware they don't accept tap debit and to my knowledge there is no sign to let you know.

I just tried to pay for my meal using tap debit on my phone which works pretty much anywhere where debit is accepted as it's all I had on me (Forgot my wallet at home today) - After trying over and over the server let me know they don't accept tap debit, I let him know I would be back to pay and he demanded an E-Transfer. I am not comfortable E transferring a random server when they payment is supposed to go directly to the restaurant. As I was leaving trying to explain I would be back to pay and trying to flag my friend down to come help the server continued to berate me to the point that several customers joined in until I had to tell them off.

I got in the car and left because of the embarrassing situation, I could have gotten my friend to cover me and go back to pay which was my intention, but I am not going into a small space where several strangers are trying to fight me over $12 to pay my bill. I will go back tomorrow to pay the debt I owe but will not be returning for another meal - it's unfortunate, they thought they were losing out on $12 when in reality they lost out on much more from someone who (used to) casually frequent their restaurant.

It is also worth noting that they did not cross check our vaccine cards to our ID when we sat down, so their covid policies are not...

My friend Geoff has been raving their "special pho" for a couple months now and I just had to try it out for myself see what all this hype was about. Tucked in Ironwood, mall, Pho 37 is a relatively small Vietnamese restaurant.

As we sat down, we ordered 4 bowls of #40 for the four of us. Number 40, "Chef Tuan's Special" is the pho that my friend had been talking about non-stop. When our bowls of noodles arrived, you could already smell that there's something irregular about the soup. To our surprise, there was also a yellow egg yolk sitting at the top of our broth. This is extremely unusual and I don't think I've ever gotten this at any Vietnamese restaurant I've been to before. We were intrigued.

I immediately picked up a spoon to taste this broth. The broth is really unlike any pho broth I've had. It's garlicky, it's smokey, it's full of flavour. I noticed that some of their meats are slightly charred, which explains the smokey taste to the broth. I totally understand why Geoff speaks so highly of this place. It definitely lived up to its hype for me. I can't wait to come back next already! You can follow more of my foodie adventures on Instagram...