Phoenix Pho boba Tea — Restaurant in Abilene

What is with these 1 star reviews? Viewers please be impartial with every review.

I came here on my road trip as well. I didn’t expect this restaurant to be anything decent since this town is fairly small and some reviews weren’t that great.

My first impression: it is beautiful! The restaurant is nice and clean, and the location is so spot on. I guess the location and the great view already compensate for the price that they are charging. Actually, everything went up these days, we can’t expect small business like this to sacrifice their revenue unless we want them to close down. Then we will lose this relaxing spot from our road trip.

As a Vietnamese, I know full well how homemade Pho tastes like, but this is a restaurant. Of course the flavor is not that strong because they are serving the public. They had to tone down the flavor so that we can adjust it to our liking. What’s the point of having sauce on the side? For those Vietnamese that complain about this, I guess you guys have not had Pho outside your house that much. I prefer this place over some terrible Pho restaurants that I’ve been to in Dallas and in Orange County, California.

As for service, I honestly didn’t expect much since I’ve been to many Asian restaurants so my standard was not that high. In contrast, the girl who took my order was actually really nice and was much better than many waiters that I met in other Pho restaurant. Had a little chat with the owner and questioned him about the bad things I read here. He shared that there were a couple of employees that were let go due to bad behavior to the customers (ha!) and some of them intentionally left bad reviews on his business. Well duh.

Boba! Man, what a bonus. Who would have thought that they had brown sugar boba drink here, and at a Pho restaurant at that! This was really a treat for my trip. I don’t care how good they think those Taiwanese franchises are. I’m exhausted from my trip. I just wanted something nice to cool me down, and this place’s brown sugar milk tea was top notch! I have to say it again it was an extra plus to me.

In conclusion, the nice exterior & interior, the view, the upbeat atmosphere, the service, the food, and especially the boba made my road trip experience ten times better. No more that body fatigue, and now I can add a relaxing stop to my plan whenever I go past Abilene.

P/S: yes I’m a Vietnamese so I could be a little biased if you think so, but I tried to be impartial as much as I could unlike some other so called “Vietnamese” that left bad reviews on the food here. You guys should stick to your mom cooking,...

A welcome addition to help break the culinary curse of Abilene.

Anyone who has a taste for authentic foreign cultural cuisine, and has looked for a place to eat in Abilene, Texas, will tell you; your options are pretty slim. I have never seen a more culinary xenophobic city as Abilene, Texas. The people here are good old-fashioned Meat and Potatoes people and have little to no tolerance for anything different regarding food. Many have been the authentic cuisine restaurants that have tried to get a foothold here and have failed. As a world traveler who loves the culinary adventure of trying new things, I often have been disappointed when trying new foreign cuisine places in Abilene that have to tone down and modify their recipes to make the locals happy and stay in business.

Well, I am happy to say that this is not the case here at Phoenix Pho. I was pleasantly surprised by the fantastic flavors they presented me with. I came here with family and friends, and everything we ordered was delicious.

The restaurant is located in the new San Antonio-style mini river-Walk. This is a city project that was recently developed to try to attract more tourism to Abilene. I hope Pheonix Pho can survive here because I have little hope for the success of this city project, which is based on a failed "Field of Dreams" idea that if "You build it, they will come." The city planners believe that Abilene needs to be a city of culture and entertainment to draw in tourism. So they have invested millions of taxpayer money in promoting the building of new hotels and tourist attractions like this scaled-down San Antonio style river walk. There are three things wrong with their plans.

Abilene has no real main attractions to draw people here, like the Alamo, Six Flags, Fiesta Texas, the Grand Canyon, Mount Rush Moore, etc. Nothing historically exciting ever happened here. Things like the Riverwalk merely side attractions t min attractions, not main attractions.

The local Abilenian culture is not very open to new things.

Abilene needs good-paying, factory-level, goods-production jobs to improve the economy, not more minimum wage service industry-related jobs like the entertainment industry, restaurants, and hotels bring.

So, I really hope that Phenix Pho can survive, because it is a great place to get some good Pho in a lovely setting, but I am not holding my breath. I have seen every Pho place that has ever opened hear, fold in short order, and they were not in one of the most expensive real estate locations in town. So, let's keep this one open by...

Pho-getaboutit! The Pho may be good, but I didn't order it. What I did order was described in the menu as containing shrimp, beef, and pork, rice and accompanied by three fried rolls. It was the most expensive dish on the menu: $15. It came with no fried rolls. When I asked about this, I was told that was a mistake in the menu. The dish had plenty of rice, nice and hot. There were two room-temperature small shrimp and all the other meat was quite cold. Plus, all the meat, shrimp included, were cooked together and all tasted the same: cheap Chinese buffet; over-cooked, over-salted, over-seasoned, brown, boring mess. They took the plate back to do it over. I had told them I was not going to pay the full price for their most expensive dish when they didn't provide the fried rolls. The owner (or manager) said she would reduce the price. They concluded that if they gave me one fried roll (also boring and tasteless) that would be justification to charge me full price. I had also ordered a tea/fruit drink that was delicious, when I finally received it. I had to remind them multiple times that I had ordered it. When the bill arrived it charged me the full price despite their having provided only one roll instead of three. To their credit, after I refused again to pay the full price for a short order, they reduced the bill considerably more than I would have expected so their hearts are in the right place. Bottom line: I can get bad Chinese buffet food anywhere, any time. What I was served had none of the flavor or freshness that good Vietnamese food has. (NB: For five years I lived on the same block with a superb Vietnamese restaurant where I ate at least twice a week. The Pho was phabulous and all the other dishes, just as good and just as recognizably different from other Asian food.) I might go give Phoenix Pho another chance, by ordering the Pho, as I see a couple people have praised it, but I doubt it. Nobody improves THAT MUCH from one page of the menu to...