Pho L'Amour Cafe — Restaurant in Brookfield

Ellen and I were on our way to another restaurant that turned out to be closed so we drove back and I noticed the Pho L'Amour sign. Instead of searching for another eatery at Brookfield Square, we stopped in. It's a nice, clean restaurant with Vietnamese decorations. We were the only ones there for a Sunday Noon lunch. The young waiter, Do, was very good and had only been here for 11 months after arriving from Saigon. He is attending Greenfield High. We are not familiar with Vietnamese but it seems to be distant cousins to Thai and Chinese. I ordered the Tenderloin Pho with house fried rice and spring rolls and Ellen had a chicken and veggies dish. I didn't realize that the Pho is a super huge tureen of soup with lots of steak, veggies, rice noodles and some other stuff. I had to take it home in a large container, The house rice was generous with shrimp, chicken and other fun ingredients. The spring rolls threw me because I was expecting a fried roll like the Thai ones I've had but this was a translucent wrapper with a blander peanut sauce. I asked Do if this Pho was different from Pho in Saigon and he answered "It's cleaner!". Good to know next time I am in Vietnam. We had a nice chat and the food was excellent. Well...

Due to good reviews, we've decided to take a little trip to go try this place. The pho was horrible, it's basically star anise, fish sauce and water. I've never had such nasty pho. We couldn't even finish it, the meat portion is small and again, taste straight up like star anise. No beef paste whatsoever. The spring rolls were okay/ only one small shrimp in it with shredded lettuce. The egg rolls were burnt. The sauce portion is not much. I was wiping my mouth with my hands because they didn't have napkins. The water is from the sink, you can definitely taste it. We had to order thai tea because we didn't want to risk getting sick from the sink water. This place is way too greedy, the lime is 1 slice cut into 3 small. Everything here sucked. We left a small tip anyway because we are not bad people but we will never attend this place again. Maybe their other food options taste better, we don't know and we will never want to find out.

P.S we spent over $70 (not including tip YET $$ ) on 2 bowls of pho, one regular size and one large, with 1 order of spring rolls and egg rolls, with 2 Thai tea.

Could've spent $70+...

Worst service in the world. I arrived and waited 20 minutes before the waiter came over, and that’s only because we had to state out loud we were ready to order. And then we had to ask for water, and then it was warm water. After we placed our orders (after he said he was out of every smoothie) it took another 25 minutes for anything to arrive, and we were the only ones in the restaurant the whole time,(Party of 4)but then he messed up and gave me a regular size and not a large like I asked for. When I brought it to his attention he said “oh you’re correct you did order a large, ummm can you just take the regular?” I thought he might get in trouble if he had to take it back so I didn’t make a big deal about any of it, the pho was extra salty, but the last straw was we had to ask to refill our warm glasses of water every time someone was out and he was literally at the counter behind us, so my assumption now is he’s just lazy. Never again, stick to Pho Saigon. They have the best service of any Vietnamese restaurant and their pho is...