Spicy Garden Pho House Restaurant — Restaurant in Saskatoon

What they get right:

1. The place is clean, relaxed and casual. The food is great, authenticly asian.

2. Good mix of booths and tables.

3. I think they spent much of the startup budget on the flooring and the furniture. Very nice feel to it; The tables are solid wood and everything is shiney and new. Excelent! The two skylights and the floor-to-celing front windows keep it bright and cheery too. The booths have just enough lighting; not too bright, not too dark.

4. Servers are relaxed and attentive. I have had zero problems with the service here.

What they get wrong:

1. The menus are tattered. The fonts, layout and wording on the menu really needs a makeover. Seriously, the menu is hard to read. The same goes for the board that has the specials on it; whoever is writing it either needs a larger board or needs to stop trying to cram too many words on one page because if I can't read it from my chair then it's not fulfilling it's purpose.

2. The owner needs to yake a course in hospitality planning. They're not rude, they're just not greeting the customers right when they come it. The hostess station is too far away from the front door and it's in an awkward position. It's trying to fill two roles at once and it's failing at the greeting role. They can take a lesson from every other family restaurant in Saskatoon: The first thing the customers should see when they walk through the door is a greeter/server/host so there needs to be a station at the front door. The customers need to feel welcome the moment they walk through the door.

3. The walls are too bare. There's a grand total of two pictures. You might call it minimalist, I call it spartan.

4. The front door has no wheelchair-friendly door opener. There are no stairs or steps to climb but that door is still a barrier to access for potential customers. At least the washroom is wheelchair-friendly.

That said, I give the place 10/10 for the quality of food, 8/10 for hospitality. I would eat here everyday if the...

We had been loyal customers for the last 15 years. I used to recommend this as the best place to go. Since last year we noticed things going downhill. Had a bad meal but chalked it up to being an off day, it happens. Gave them another try a few months later and it was okay-ish but still not like it used to be. Haven't been back in at least 6 months but felt like giving them another try today.

Sadly WE WILL NEVER BE BACK after our experience today. House Special noodle bowl noodles were complete mush. Zero flavour. Hardly any meat. Ate maybe 1/4 and couldn't stomach any more blandness. The "crispy" spring rolls were mushy inside, almost was worried they were raw but they weren't - just a weird texture. And the worst of the meals was the ginger beef. It looked gray and tasted so terrible with a sickly metallic taste and was simply inedible. When we explained what was wrong, we got such attitude from the owner who refused to acknowledge that there was a problem, even said she tried some from the plate after we sent it back and that it was perfectly fine and she didn't taste metal. She really made it sound like we just changed our mind about what we ordered and wanted to try something else. We get the ginger beef every single time we order so we know what it usually tasted like and it was clear something was off. It was such a disappointing experience overall. (They did make something different in place of the terrible ginger beef dish, which was acceptable. Just felt like we were being treated as scammers for daring to mention a problem with the food.)

I feel bad rating the service a 1* because the server we had this afternoon was actually quite nice and seemed to feel bad, but the owner's service was...

First off our order was delivered in a floral scented plastic bag .. pho soup was ordered .. asked for extra lemon and cilantro none came at all .. a combination meal came with sweet and sour ribs .. no sauce on the ribs but on the rice and made it mush inedible .. when the store was called much talk back and forth the end result was they did not care if 3 regular customers since before covid ... who know ALOT people ever come back and I only gave them 1 star to send a review I would not have wanted to give them any. The sad part was this meal was bought as a thank you for the other 2 helping me. They don't care not a good attitude for business owners today. ADDED DUE TO COMMENT: You let the Uber driver come in with his own bags and pack up your food??? As a business owner the part that NO solution was even offered to make things right and you did not care if we ever came back and being called rude when in other posts you are happy to have things brought to your attention ... your telephone etiquette is far different than your posting etiquette .. that was quite a bit of money to throw...