Phở 18 — Restaurant in Arlington

I do not like leaving negative reviews but I feel that if I had more knowledge of this place, we would have chosen another place. I am not sure how we endured a whole meal there. We must have been very hungry. After a long day at 6 Flags, we were tired and starving. My husband was craving Vietnamese food - as usual. We tried a different restaurant first but it was closed so we ended up here mainly because it was one of the very few places open.

There were 3 occupied tables - a table that were doing karaoke and 2 other couples. I think the karaoke table were owners/friends because everyone who waited on us sat at that table to sing.

The first thing I noticed - aside from the deafening music - was a strange sewer odor. Thank goodness the water they brought us was bottled water. They came to get our order and we had to point to the menu because there was no way to hear anyone speak.

The food took an extremely long time to come out. We had 4 bowls of beef pho and 1 bowl of hu Tieu tôm mực. One bowl of tge pho - the noodles were severely undercooked and crunchy still. Another bowl was so overcooked that my son said it disintegrated in his mouth. They came out at different times and the disintegrating bowl was the last of the pho to come out.

The 4 of them were more than halfway done with their bowls of pho before my bowl of Hu Tieu came out. It had flavor but not quite the right flavor.. The shrimp was too soft, the squid was too tough and both tasted old and slightly freezer burnt.

We couldn’t talk to each other during the meal because of the loud music. It never stopped - as soon as one song ended, another began. It was literally louder than many concerts I’ve been to.

I have a headache now from the loud music and I have barely gotten my hearing back. In addition, the food wasn’t very good so I am still hungry. The one star was given for the fact that they were still open at 9pm and that everyone that served...

I haven’t dined in at this restaurant and only bought the poached chicken rice (cơm gà quý phi) to go. That dish is wayyy too overpriced. I don’t recommend anyone buying it. I got one whole chicken with lots of rice as fillers and paid almost $50! The chicken was bland and slightly undercooked (some red spots closer to the bone). The vegetables they gave weren’t exactly the freshest. Save yourself some money, or at least use that money to buy much better chicken at another restaurant like Pearl.

The thing that really turned me off was their questionable hand washing practices. When I came to pick up my order, this man (presumably the owner) came out to ring me up. I kid you not—both of his hands were completely covered in food grease and some food particles. With those hands, he dug into the cash box, picked up the money and handed me my change. I was very reluctant to receive it from him. So my question is, was he planning to go straight back to handling food after that transaction?? Talking about cross contamination. Everyone knows money is one of the dirtiest things in the world. I know shady things probably happen behind closed doors in many restaurants, but this was...

This review is going to be really personal because of the way we were treated and what I found in my soup. First of all as we were arriving to the restaurant this Asian man tried to run us off the road. It was only a two-way street and he was on the wrong side he was like pushing us over to the side . He ended up working at the restaurant. We didn't notice that until we were leaving. The waitress was very unprofessional. Did not know anything about the menu at all. Anything we asked she wasn't sure about. I ended up finding in my soup a part of something you cut the vegetables on I'm sure I'm not quite too sure it looked like some kind of antenna with little antennas sticking out and it was a pho soup. The food was terrible the restaurant looked dirty from the inside. absolutely would NOT recommend this restaurant AT ALL! I would give it a minus five stars.! Now hopefully we don't all get sick! Totally...