Bun Saigon Vietnamese Restaurant — Restaurant in Toronto

I was already quite biased and skeptical about coming here for dinner as I am a regular customer at the Pho Xe Lua right beside this restaurant. And to my surprise, my skepticism was right.

For one, when we enetered into this restaurant, there was no pho aroma (for those of you who are big pho advocates like I am, you know this is a big deal). Secondly, there were flying ants falling from the ceiling above my table; nearly 5-8 ants fell from above and was crawling everywhere on my table. Not only that, there were dead bugs all dried up and stuck to the spoons which they provide on the side of the table. Having a phobia for bugs, I was already getting ready to up-and-leave this place. The only reason I came here was because I took my aunt out for dinner and she has chronic back issues which restricted her from going up the stairs to Pho Xe Lua.

Anywho, the restaurant was fairly empty and had probably 2 or 3 tables occupied, which made me wonder why it took nearly 25 minutes to prepare my food. You would think that because food preparation took up such a large portion of the time that it would be an exceptional bowl of pho, right?

Wrong. We ordered a pho, bun bo hue, and bun. The pho tasted like hot brown sugary water with absolutely NO pho taste to it at all. The bun bo hue was exactly the same; tasteless and way too sweet (and my dad is a diabetic). The portions for my pho was decent, but the noodles for both the bun bo hue and bun was a joke. I would say “you pay for what you get”, but I paid way more than a regular pho place would charge, and did NOT get what I paid for.

Not only that, the bill came out to be more expensive than the menu displayed. The workers tried to be slick with the bill by adding a couple dollars extra thinking we won’t notice (which we did, but we just didn’t bring it to the manager’s attention because we didn’t want to cause a scene).

Anyways, if you guys like restaurants invested with flying ant’s, overtly-sweet soups with no aroma and over charged bills, I would recommend coming to this...

As the other reviewers have said, WATCH YOUR RECEIPT! Just wanted to leave a post so others do not get scammed like we did.

The lady/owner up charged our bill by $18. Our bill should have come up to $65 taxes included and instead she insisted we pay $80 plus a $3 fee if you pay with credit card for a total of $83. She showed us our receipt without any itemized amounts for each dish ordered and wrote an inflated total amount without calculating the actual price per dish. I was skeptical but she kept insisting that this is what we owed her. We tipped an additional $10 on top thinking we were supporting a local business on Chinese New Year with our 2 young children. So we were taken for a total $28. Very DISHONEST owners.

We ordered 2 XL Phos but the size was like a small to regular sized Pho, very little meat and noodles and lots of soup that was loaded with MSG which gives it a salty and super weird sugary taste (like aspartame). There was no ox tail or meat and bone broth aroma or taste. There was also a dead fruit fly in our lime soda drink. The other appetizer (shrimp on sugar cane) we ordered was under cooked and bland. We didn’t bother to tell the owner as we could see based on the lady/owner’s demeanour and no service that she would not honour anything and that she was not a good, genuine, friendly person. We also had our young children with us and didn’t want to expose them to conflict on Chinese New Year. So we ate whatever we could manage to swallow as we were hungry and got the hell out of there quick. We won’t be fooled again and we will never come back.

Your better option is to eat at the Vietnamese restaurant right beside and upstairs called Pho Xe Lua, service and food is much better there and they are not dishonest cheats.

As a side note, years ago this restaurant was family owned and run by a nice older lady. The food back then was authentic and good and so we thought we were coming back to the same older lady. Unfortunately, the current lady owner is a...

I like Vietnamese beef noodles very much, and whenever I have had a chance to try a new restaurant, I would order a bowl of raw beef noodles with soup. When the noodles are served, I would first taste a spoonful of plain soup with spring union but without adding any seasoning or sauces, then a piece of raw beef that usually up to 70% or 80% done depending on the temperature of the soup at that time. After that I would submerge the bean sprouts and other vegetables totally into the soup for a few minutes. If I am a bit hungry, I would finish some of the noodles and then back to the meat and vegetables. In that case, I will be able to taste slowly all the ingredients in the bowl.

The soup of Bun Saigon was excellent, the thickness of the raw beef was perfect which the texture of it was not spoiled or damaged by the heat of the soup, and I could taste its freshness and sweetness. The first time I went there was in mid Oct 2018, and I returned for the noodles within 10 days despite I had to take the subway from uptown. This is the best Vietnamese restaurant I have had tried so far and I will go back again if I visit Toronto next time.

I visited Bun Saigon again on 14 May 2019 for lunch and ordered the same item - the raw beef noodles with soup again. I enjoyed it in the same same procedure as I introduced last earlier, and was happy to find that the chef maintained the cooking with the highest standard. The taste and temperature of soup, the thickness of each slice of raw beef were excellent.

I noticed one more thing this time that the soup did not contained much MSG that it did not make me feel thirsty in the afternoon. This is really the best Vietnamese noodles in Toronto, and I have no hesitation to...