Bamboo House Restaurant — Restaurant in Bothell

A friend of a friend recommended this place for their Pho which is what I didnt get LOL so I'm keeping an open mind and would want to come back to try their pho.

Family friendly: Yes Pet friendly: No Parking: shared lot in strip mall

FOOD: Appetizers: Cha Gio (crispy egg rolls - mix of pork and carrots, onions, rice vermicelli wrapped in spring roll skin and fried gold brown. Served with fish sauce) $8.45 - 3 STARS: Not the best but not the worse. It reminded me of the Americanized egg rolls from Panda Express which isnt a good thing.

Vegetarian Entrees: Goi Cuon Chay (tofu spring rolls, shredded lettuce, mint, and rice vermicelli with tofu wrapped with rice paper. Served with peanut dipping sauce) $7.45 - 3 STAR: it was okay. Nothing amazing about it and could use some seasoning.

Appetizers: Banh Mi - Ham $8.45 - 2 STAR: Its like they tried but really didnt want to try... Most banh mi is usually stuffed with a lot of pickled carrots and daikon, cucumber, jalapeno, and meat. Most places if they're not very traditional will use mayo instead of pate but this place used butter. Butter is a first for me and im not sure where their head was.

Appetizers: Banh Mi - Pork $84.45 - 3 STARS: Similar complaint with the lack of items in the bread but at least the pork had decent flavor.

RESTAURANT/INTERIOR: Unexpectedly larger on the inside. Clean and tidy inside. The majority of the tables were push together to make long rows of table in the which usually you see them separated.

MENU: Like most Vietnamese restaurants, you see a good assortment of Pho options, rice plates, and vermicelli noodle bowls. I do wish they had more assorted soup based bowls, especially since this is family run. But I guess do to the location they are catering the the more popular items that non-Vietnamese people are used to.

STAFF: Met with who I assume is the husband and wife. Both friendly enough but pretty in line with most Asian restaurants, you're not going for the...

I have been to many Pho restaurants in the area but this place has the worst customer service I have seen, and not to mention the questionable cleanliness overall. I am surprised that none of the reviews here mentioned the customer service aspect.

Walking through the door we saw a woman behind the register and said "Hi, how are you" but in returns were told "Sit at one of the tables by the window". No greetings, no curtesy whatsoever. There was only 1 other table with customers at that time. The tables by the window were super sticky and dirty so we had to pick a different table. We went to the restrooms to wash our hands before the meal and the soap was extremely watered down. Is liquid soap so expensive that you had to dilute it that much? This raises a serious health safety concern for the workers there and the food that they prepare.

The only short conversation we had with the woman (who seems to be the owner as well) was when she took our orders. Throughout our meal, she never checked up on us. We went up to the register to pay after waiting too long for her to notice that we were still there...

I am bilingual and Vietnamese, and I understand that sometimes a language barrier can make it difficult to carry on a conversation, but a simple check-in like "how are you?" or "is everything ok?" is not that hard to say, especially if you're in a restaurant business. The soups that we had were OK, not bad but definitely no where near the top 10 in the area (if you know what a real good Pho tastes like).

We're definitely not coming back - their sanitization practice is questionable, but I really hope the owner reads and finds this...

This will be high on my Eastside Vietnamese list for when I don't feel up to going to Little Saigon or MLK. Not having to cross the lake is a good trade off for thr slight dropoff in quality. Since this was our first time here, I was hoping for a little guidance from the staff, but our waitress spoke almost no English and my pronounciation of what little Vietnamese food names that I know are so bad that we ended up pointing to the menu to order. Our food came out of the kitchen very fast.

The Beef Stew with Rice Noodles is excellent. The broth is rich and flavorful, but only slightly too sweet. There was a very generous amount of beef with enough fat for flavor, but the cut that they use lacks connective tissue (tendons and ligaments). This was a satisfying bowl. I only added a little sambal.

The Bun with Grilleg Pork, Grilled Shrimp, and Egg Roll was also very good. Both the pork and the shrimp were grilled skillfully - slightly charred, but still very moist and flavor packed.

We're looking forward to trying more...