Pho Zen Vietnamese Cuisine — Restaurant in Vancouver

5 stars for food quality only. Don't expect an Anh and Chi type of customer service, this is not the place where you get checked up on consistently. However, I understand this is a family ran restaurant and yes, you might witness a younger family member greeting a customer or taking payment. Not every family owned business have the luxury to hire adult employees. Please be mindful that it's easier said than done.

A friend recommended this restaurant as I live nearby. We are both from Winnipeg, and we were wanting to find a gem like this that reminded us of home.

I often crave the Beef Balls Pho, it's a simple bowl of soup with Beef balls, noodles, and broth. Which is what I order here, no. 13 Beef Balls Pho on their menu. I was blown away by the broth, it was very warming with balanced flavours and the texture was very rich! This us how I like to make my pho at home because most places rush and don't take the time to let the broth simmer. Most broths I've tried is clear in colour which isn't appealing to the eye, hence it just looks bland which it could end up tasting bland. Next was the rice noodles, it was cooked perfectly! Imagine 'al dente' texture!

My new obsession is their 'Bun Bo Hue', it has variety of different meats and a flavourful spicy broth. I'm very picky when it comes to this type of soup. I give this bowl a 10/10 because the noodles used are rice noodles which holds a lot of flavour and broth versus serving with the thick vermicelli noodles. I normally would substitute rice noodles, but Pho Zen has created my perfect bowl of Bun Bo Hue!

Lastly, oh my goodness their Vietnamese Ice Coffee is the best I've ever had at a restaurant! Perfect amount of sweetness from the condensed milk, and the fresh aroma from the coffee, reminds me of those...

Food was pretty good especially the vermicelli bowl #57. The large pho bowl was very stingy totally not filling at all. The size of each tendon is about the size of a dime...they probably cut a piece of tendons into 4 small pieces.

The service was one of the worst service I have ever experienced. My servicer was a kid around 12 years old - very rude and has quite an attitude. Eg. The cup she served the water in was clearly dirty...you can see a very visible black smear ~ 4 cm long on it and you can easily rub it off. But she insisted it was not and that the cup was clean. She replaced the cup but pour the same water from the old cup into the new cup.

When they served us the spring roll I asked another server (probably her mom) nicely if this is the vegetarian spring roll...this is because one of us is vegetarian. The mom probably not knowing English did not answer and probably asked the server girl what we just asked. The server girl came up to us and asked us what we just said to her mom. The attitude just didn't feel normal....it felt like we just insulted her mom!

And we saw another customer requesting a to go bubble tea cup from her. The girl gave her the cup and the lid. The customer accidentally drop the lid and the girl (server) saw it but just turned her back away and continued on her cellphone. She did not offer to give her...

The food was surprisingly tasty. I mean, Vietnamese rarely disappoints and this place is the same. But as tasty as the food is, its not what I would like to see in a restaurant in Vancouver.

The restaurant is very simple, the restaurant owner and wife runs this with their .... maybe a 7 - 10 year old daughter?

She will be the one to greet you and take your order. Super cute, but she's like wee high, why does she need to work? (She made no mistakes and is very sharp). If she doesnt understand something she will say loudly and with a scrunched face "what?" 🥴

The little one was skipping around back and forth next to you (no mask as well) waiting on customers with her flip flops and against tile floors. Just a little on the noisy side for me. I would like to enjoy my food peacefully, esp since I choose to sit inside during this pandemic.

Summary? I would definitely eat from here again. Dine in? Probably not. There was a bogo on uber for pho. Maybe we will try that next time.

Oh, I ordered the beef short ribs (picture). The dipping sauce was really good too.

Husband got Bum Bo Hue. He...