Pho Nation — Restaurant in Alameda

I will note that i have worked in the restaurant industry for the past decade and while i understand that service should not be a detriment to the food, i can barely unravel what transpired here.

I sat down at 11pm on a wednesday night, a server with red hair and glasses came up to us and asked for our order within maybe 2 minutes. We ordered 2 bowls of pho and chicken wings. About 20 minutes later we saw a table that had ordered after us get their food. Which i did not think anything of as this could happen due to the order.

Me and my friend were talking, diligently waiting for our food. A different server came up to us about 10 minutes (by this point it had been over 40 minutes) and asked us if we had EVEN ORDERED OUR FOOD. obviously we were shocked by this because we told her that another girl had taken our order. This new server apologized profusely about the order not being sent in. At this moment i had taken a scan around the dining area and there were maybe 4-5 tables max all of which already had food.

Not only were we upset but the girl who had originally taken our order came back and dropped off some lemon drink which she didnt apologize for and didnt acknowledge that she had even made a mistake.

I looked for their email on their website, which to my dismay did not load (website).

We ordered the food which we had ordered nearly an hour ago to go, and they gave us thai teas as if that was meant to solve the very clear neglect they had on the FEW tables that were in the restaurant.

I normally would NEVER complain about a restaurant's service as i myself have been through that hell hole but the overall lack of concern they had for the few customers that were in house is irresponsible and alarming.

If anyone ever asks me about a pho place in alameda or oakland, they will know for damn sure that this is one of the places they...

If you're looking for a quiet spot family friendly pho shop, this isn't it. This venue is a bar that happens to sell pho.

The good: Really big venue, lots of seating and standing room. Would be great for a huge party. Open really late. Nice if you have a pho craving after 10pm but they close at 2am so you gotta plan ahead if you want some pho after the club Pho broth was good, was it worth the price not really.

The bad: The noodles were lumped up like they were taken out of a Ziploc bag. The noodles broke when I unlumped then. That's ok if it's takeout but $17 at a sit down restaurant, unimpressed. Severely understaffed. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume I got unlucky and came on a busy Sunday but it was very noticeable. There were 2 bartenders and a busy boy/ waiter. Tables that were not cleared. There was not one to flag down so we sat ourselves and got our own menus. Bartender was helping serve the food and taking orders. Wobbly table. Not sure how that's possible given this is a brand new restaurant but if you're asking $17 for pho and $15 for cocktails that's pretty disappointing. Weird restaurant layout. Half the restaurant was like a sports bar and the other half was setup like a generic pho shop.

tl;dr Come here if you're looking to pregame or host a big party. Would not recommend the pho here. Save a few dollars and eat at the two other pho...

The food was good, not amazing but good. The egg rolls were average though..I expect imperial rolls at a Vietnamese place, these were more like frozen egg rolls.

The atmosphere though.. awful. And I don't really care as much as other people.. first off the windows are all blacked out from the inside like a dive bar. The space is huge, but they didn't use the table space well and some of the booth seats are too low for the tables. We went a second time last night (a Thursday, early evening) and it was so loud!! They had a game on a whole bunch of TV's, the dining room was empty when we arrived except for some screaming girls in one of the back rooms where we tried to escape the noise. The bass was crazy loud and vibrated through your whole body, we went to a different room, it was still super loud and the lights in there were awful, super bright and not even aligned with the tables. After trying to flag someone down to order for a while we eventually left in search of a restaurant instead of a night club disguised as a restaurant.

Also when we walked back there was a big crowd of guys smoking in front, and I noticed all the cigarette butts they had thrown everywhere in front of the restaurant. It looked like everyone who worked there plus the few people hanging out at the bar had gone outside to smoke right in front of the...