The One Pho — Restaurant in Austin

3/16/2024: We went to this restaurant again with some friends and shared the special fried fish. They don't necessarily have this on the menu, but we heard through various groups that you can place an order ahead of time. You definitely want to do that in order to reserve a fish for when you dine in. We also tried the hot stone pho, the fish sauce chicken wings, and coconut shrimp.

In this visit the actual hot stone PHO was really hot which they have signs all over the restaurant that tells you this. In fact, this is probably the right amount of heat that my wife prefers, so take that for what it's worth. The broth was good and hot and flavorful.

The garlic fish sauce chicken wings was surprisingly pretty good and the shrimp has the green rice puffs around it which made it very unique and also good.

The star of this evening was the fish. Again, there aren't many restaurants that have this dish in the area. The only place that we can compare this to is Saigon block in Dallas. I would definitely recommend if you can reserve a fish to try it out. They give you all of the fixings, dipping sauce, and rice paper that you need to have a feeling meal.

The only blemish of the night was the service was a little off. Maybe it was because they had a lot of customers that had ordered or reserved a fish and a little overwhelmed. They brought the fish out to our table and we had to wait for the plates and bowls for the dipping sauce. Not to mention, the place that they gave us to roll the fish was an appetizer plate which was a bit too small for us to roll.

I highly recommend the hot stone pho and the fried fish if you come next time.

Original review: With the many different places around the area, this place stands out really for their bo ne. This is a sizzling plate of French inspired culinary dish yet much better. It has beef, eggs, pate and shumai. On the other hand, the pho is actually decent. The broth came out hot and the raw eye round steak was very tender. They really load the banh mi with meat as well.

If you're in the area and need some good pho this place definitely...

People say that if you go to dinner on an empty stomach, you will likely think everything is good. I had some snacks and was about half full and didn't feel too thrilled about going to dinner. But it was late, 8 PM, and if I didn't go now, I would go hungry later. So I went anyway, expecting the food to not be that great. Boy, was I wrong! The stone pot pho (S1 on the menu, I think) was out of this world! I'm Vietnamese and I know my pho very well. I was expecting this place to cater to American style, and I am so glad I was wrong. I have never seen pho served this way in Denver; it's sort of like Korean-style hot pot. The broth comes in a stone bowl that keeps the broth hot longer and all other ingredients separate. If you are a slow eater like me, you won't have stale cold pho after 15 minutes! I think this strategy is brilliant! I wish I had something like this back home. One recommendation for y'all is that don't put in all the ingredients at once like a caveman! Put your raw steak in piece by piece as you eat it so you can enjoy the flavor. If you put in all your steak at once, it will be too well done by the time you finish your second piece and you defeat the purpose of the stone bowl. The broth was sweet and savory; the more you eat, the tastier you make your broth so you can enjoy slurping it at the end. As I wasn't too hungry, I neglected 60% of my noodles. Tonight, I regret going to dinner on a half-full stomach here. I wish I would have saved my appetite and devoured all the food like the beast that I usually am. I will definitely come back in the next few nights/days that I am in town. I am also a sucker for authentic juice, so the sugar cane juice with a hint of kumquat was unbelievable.

Now , I wish I was one of those instagrammer people and took some picture for y'all. Halfway thru the meal, I thought about it, but I don't think y'all would appreciate the tornado scene I've created. Perhaps someone else who go here can do it...

I would like to give the food five stars. The grilled catfish and hot stone pho tasted so good. We also liked the veal salad. However, if it’s not because of the staff who made the reservation over the phone, I would definitely give the entire experience 5 stars.

Initially I called one week before to make a lunch reservation and order a grilled a fish as I knew it would take them 2 hours to prepare. Due to the upcoming winter storm on the reservation date, I called again 3 days ago to change the reservation to one day before. The lady who answered the call was very rude and barely understood me. I was asked to repeat my phone number 3 times. I’m not a fast talker but I had to slow down each time so she can note down the numbers. I clearly told her it’s a date change instead of a new reservation. Was very worried if she really understood me so I tried to clarify again. But she just hang up on me without saying thank you or goodbye, which seemed pretty rude for a F&B staff. I called again immediately and one gentleman answered the phone this time. He told me he got it and would prepare the fish on the new reservation date for us.

I recommended the food to a few friends after the dining yesterday . Today I got a call from the restaurant asking why I didn’t show up. I was so surprised that it happened…I said I called so many times to get the date changed and we did come yesterday for lunch.

I totally recommend the food of this place if you walk in and have a face to face conversation with the staff. However, I have to say calling to make a reservation if you want grilled fish is a challenge. The communication is a...