Pho Hoang — Restaurant in Arcata

I try not to write reviews I think might affect businesses in any negative way, but I tried to give this restaurant three chances before I finally decided to write my review.

First time I visited, it was many years ago, almost 4 years ago. My order came out wrong and it was tasteless. But it was my first time and I thought it might’ve been just a mistake that they mixed my order and did not get it right. It was simply a veggie pho, however, they gave me meat pho broth with vegetables.

Vegetarian should mean only vegetarian, no meat, no animals broth and no meat. Just vegetarian!

I never went back because I did not like to spend money on bad quality food and at a place that doesn’t not honor customer food requests. When I go dining out I would like to enjoy my meal safely because I am taking a break.

After I got married, my husband tried to convince me that it was a good place because he had never had any issues. But at the same time he only orders the same dish.

I decided to go with him, and after we ordered, our drinks this time never made it to the table. I was not so impressed by the customer service, but I thought maybe they are very busy and it was an honest mistake. Our orders were okay, I was very scared to order anything so I just got the fresh spring rolls because I can at least see what’s in it. He got the usual order yellow shrimp curry. Because he is a pescatarian. No meat.

Yesterday, a friend of ours invited us to go for pho. I was apprehensive about it but I thought it would be nice to have something warm like pho since it was a cold no night.

I’ll start with the service: We waited 20 minutes and no one came to take our order. I had to flag them down to get our order. The person who took our order did not take any notes.

We orders two drinks, vegetarian egg rolls, one vegetarian yellow curry, one shrimp yellow curry, and one seafood (only shrimp) noodle special.

One drink made it to the table, I got completely different order, the egg rolls were chicken egg rolls and they were ice cold, and we got chicken yellow curry. So the only thing that was right it was the veggie yellow curry. Everything else is a complete different order.

We sent back the chicken curry to get a fresh shrimp yellow curry, and the egg rolls as well to get vegetarian cooked properly.

It almost terrified me to find out they send back the yellow curry with chicken pieces and same broth with some shrimp. I send it back and I said we do not want it and we want it to be removed from our orders.

They bring back a third bowl of shrimp curry and this time they swear it’s fresh! I told them I do not want it and they need to remove it from our orders.

We decided to share our orders and just call it a night.

The nightmare continues. We found out the seafood special rice noodle pho had beef broth instead of just seafood broth.

We were horrified by the entire experience.

This was extremely disappointing and honestly scary.

If you can, avoid for your sanity sake and to...

Different Vietnamese restaurants can have different things they excel at and I am willing to accept we did not order those items here, but the items we did order were particularly weak offerings.

We got a noddle bowl that had spring mix instead of finely sliced leaf lettuce and herbs (mint, cilantro, and at least one of three herbs I do not see in anything but Vietnamese dishes).

The Hong Kong style chow fun had the noodles stuck together in clumps, which maybe that’s how it’s done in Hong Kong, but I’ve never seen them stuck quite so badly.

The glass noodles were seasoned entirely wrong. Just wrong. (Source: restaurants in little Saigon Sacramento)

Plus: all the portions were generous.

Minus: meat was more sparse than expected. The chicken tasted like mediocre rotisserie and was not improperly marinated. Vietnamese grilled meats on noodle bowls are generally marinated in lime, lemongrass, garlic and cilantro and then grilled; this was not what we were served. The dish with egg rolls had one egg roll. The appetizer prices are ridiculously overpriced.

Also we phoned in an order, and when I came to pick it up the employee that served me referred to the first dish by menu number. Since I didn’t order by menu number but by the name of the dish, I had no clue if that was right or not. Try using the customer’s names when taking to go orders so it looks like you’re...

Where do I even begin? This place used to be a solid spot back in 2021, but whatever made it good is long gone. We were excited to revisit what we thought was a delicious Vietnamese restaurant — but what we got was a complete disaster.

Let's talk about the Pho, which should be the crown jewel of any Vietnamese restaurant. Instead, it tasted like hot water with a hint of sadness. Honestly, you’d get more flavor from a 99¢ instant pho packet at the grocery store. It was that bad.

I ordered the steak flanks — they were drenched in some overly sweet sauce that completely killed any natural flavor the meat might’ve had. As for the egg rolls, they were an absolute mess: soggy, mushy, and borderline inedible.

My wife had the Pho as well, and she couldn’t even finish it. Her exact words were, “This doesn’t taste like Pho at all.” We used to look forward to the boba here too, but now it's just sad — watery, bland, and definitely not worth the price.

I don’t know what happened to this place, but it’s nothing like it was. Save your money and your taste buds. This was hands-down one of the most disappointing meals we’ve...