Pho Friendly 18 — Restaurant in Vaughan

This place obviously DOES NOT want to do business. I have never written a food review before. To Pho Unfriendly 18 all I can say is Change your attitude manager/owner: have the decency to help out your employee & treat customers with due respect. Clearly write out the receipts, instead of a lump sum on the receipt. Especially when you are charging service charge on top of tip without notifying customers. Let the customer know if part of the meal is still coming

Folks do not I repeat DO NOT be swayed by it's name. This place is anything but friendly. While we noticed there were only less than a handful of tables sitted during peak lunch hours we decided to try it out and help out a local business.

We sat down & ordered food. One singular dish came out in separate lengthy intervals. We thought wow this dish is hella expensive for the sheer amount. We finished it and after half an hour, the part two of a singular dish came out that we had already finished. What?? Well Ok...

While there were less than a handful of tables occupied, we understood from the time they took, so we only asked for the bare minimum: a serving spoon that was missing in order to eat the dish & a singular teapot refill.

After finishing the meal, we decided to go up to the counter to make it easier for the singular female server who was also the cashier and the manager/owner (who does not do anything) to pay. The bill came in one lump sum with no clear indication of the prices distribution (dish, tax, etc).

We paid yet something wasn't right. Thanks to our Asian math we were able to calculate with a menu that we definitely paid more.

We spoke to the female server/cashier & she was quite nice about it, however the manager finally did something (honestly thought he might've been part of the restaurant or something) spoke rudely to us. After quite some time of trying just to understand what they charged us. The manager begrudgingly said it was an extra service charge on top of tips that only our table was made to pay & no other table (this is the what the heck part) because we asked too much. WOW..... what a character! Let me remind you all we asked was for a missing serving spoon & a single...

Used to be our favourite spot to eat in 2021, came back today dec 26 2023, and made the huge mistake of placing an order for PICK UP rather than dining in as we did before. We placed our order of 3 meals and a strawberry smoothie around 5:45 and it said it would be ready for 6:40. We came at 6:35 and they said 5 more minutes, we waited until 6:55. They were empty except for 2 families that came in after us and they were served their food within 20min. The server was very rude when telling us just to wait. That was the least of our concerns. We got home and the "seafood" plate we ordered came with 95% veggies and sauce and 3 pieces of RAW shrimp, a tiny piece of crab, and half a fish meatball.. The rice was dried and crusted from sitting out too long, which made it inedible. My husband and mom had to ration them so they could both have a little bit of meat. The shrimp seemed to just been taken out of a freezer and tossed on top of the warm noodles. The smoothie was completely watered down to the point it just tasted like an unflavoured slushie. My meal of tofu was also flavourless and watery. We suspect this was because we didn't tip in the online order (for PICK UP). We always tip at least 20% when we dine in. Not because their service was good, but it was good enough. We paid $72 for frozen/raw, old and watered down food. Their service has been declining since we first ate there in 2021ish (which btw they didn't have any Covid protocols such as temp check, checking vaccine status's, etc). And now it has hit rock bottom. If you pay $72 for 3 meals and a drink it should be at least cooked and come with what's advertised. Lost a loyal customer. Pic is of the frozen 3 shrimp/1 piece of crab/fish meatball my mom and husband...

I’ve never been to a restaurant where we were treated so poorly. For a restaurant to be called Pho Friendly, they were anything but friendly. My family of 3 came around 1pm, and quickly ordered 3 dishes + 3 drinks. Service at that point was okay, but slow. By the time we had finished our food and went to pay, we had reminded them of the three drinks. We kindly stacked the dishes, and wiped the table so that it would be easy for them.

30 minutes later when we have paid and our table was cleared, the drinks still had not arrived. The male server with the gold hoop earrings saw that we were still there, so he rudely came up to us and aggressively said to my dad: “what do you want?” in Vietnamese. After going up to the cash register again to question about our drinks, the woman accused us of not writing down the quantity of drinks correctly, but quickly realized that she was looking at the wrong table order and corrected herself.

We are empathetic towards a busy restaurant and understand that there are delays, but the tone and aggression when he approached us was very rude and tasteless. After finally receiving our drinks, our avocado shakes were nothing but ice, and could not taste any avocado. In addition to that the iced coffee had a considerably great amount of coffee grounds still in the drink. I’ve never been to a vietnamese restaurant where service was this rude, and quality of food was this bad.

I wished i had taken a photo of the food, because it was quite disappointing also. I hate to do this to a small vietnamese restaurant, but I hope this is not a representation for other vietnamese restaurants that actually honour great food and service.

Absolutely disappointed in our service...