Phở Vietnam — Restaurant in Cary

The pretty pictures show that Pho Vietnam does not fail on presentation. However service and quality leave a little to be desired.

Price - 4/5 The prices are reasonable until you come across the rolls. You can buy the translucent rice paper for $2 at the Asian Market (literally across the street). They come in packs of 30. You cut up cucumbers, cilantro and carrots and wrap them up and bam. You've got a vietnamese vegetarian spring roll. No deep frying necessary (you don't typically fry these kind of rice rolls and only prepare/activate them by dipping them in water). You can make 30 rolls for less than ten dollars. It's easy. Buy a 16oz bottle of Hoison dipping sauce as well for $1.69 and you're good to go. Now I know that probably sounds like too much work and that the reason you came out was to escape having to cook at home. However based upon this knowledge I have a hard time trying to justify buying 3 vietnamese spring rolls for $7 when I can make 30 for $10. It is absolutely ludicrous. They aren't made any more special than what you can do yourself. They don't have gold sprinkled on top. Why are we being charged so much for simply 3 rolls that take less than a minute to make with cheap ingredients?

Service - 3/5 Oh boy. The staff are very scatter brained and flippant. Times while customers are giving orders, the waitress is staring off in different directions making you feel as if you aren't there. And that wouldn't be much of an issue if they were then giving you the correct orders you had asked for. Because our waitress spoke very good English. There was no language barrier. Only an attention barrier. And I along with many others were getting orders we had never asked for (saw this happen 5 times in the hour we were there). I ordered Beef top round pho and instead got pork. They did keep us well stocked on water however.

Cleanliness - 4/5 The 90 score that they had was only a little disconcerting because of the flies buzzing around in the dining room area. It was not enough to scare me away because otherwise everything (tables, cups, utensils) appeared clean.

Quality - 3/5

If you've never tried vietnamese food before, this is an okay place to get a little hoison or siracha sauce on your bib. It won't shock or wow you but it will suffice if you're looking for an "okay" experience. I've had far better pho. The portion sizes are plentiful however pho noodles are supposed to be free floating in the broth. These noodles were lumped together and sticking together like a large blob of paste in the bottom of the bowl. Vegetables were lacking in the bowl as well. Literally what you see on the surface is all you get. Beautiful presentation that when you peel back the layers you find to be very lacking, empty and hollow. The vietnamese sandwich I ordered had one tablespoon of liver paste on the whole thing. I basically had a bread sandwich. With more and more vietnamese restaurants opening every day I plan on expanding my search however in a pinch, I would come back here.

Ultimately the lacking elements leave the restaurant experience as...

Not sure what happened to this place. We used to get good service and decent food there. But today ordered delivery and the order was completely ruined. All the liquids spilled from the plastic tubs. The solid foods that stayed in the packages were packed incorrectly. For example, fresh veggies dumped into greasy ziploc baggies along with single-serving sauce packs! that's just not sanitary. Noodles pressed into too-small containers. Slices of warm!!! raw beef wrapped in some plastic film and placed right next to containers with warm foods. It all looked pretty bad. When we called the restaurant trying to talk to the manager WHILE cleaning the mess, we tried to explain the problem. BTW, we do not order much through Uber Eats or any other delivery service, so not much experience dealing with these issues. The manager was incredibly rude - immediately blamed it all on the delivery service, refused to help solve this problem, refused to even listen to a very reasonable question (how to handle a situation in which they and Uber Eats point fingers at each other and I, the customer, is left hungry and with a large bill for unsafe and spilled food), and hung up on me twice. When I tried to call back, my calls were immediately hung up on. Later on, after the issue was resolved by Uber Eats, I tried calling the restaurant again to speak to the manager in a calm and reasonable way. I asked her to give me 2 minutes of her time and not hang up on me. She sounded very rude, but agreed, but as soon as I started talking (just explaining that I told Uber Eats there was no way for me to be certain whether the issue was the driver's fault or the restaurant's), she once again started yelling at me, being very rude and aggressive and hung up on me. And now the owner actually calls me a liar, accuses me of threatening/yelling at the staff and says I spilled the food! That's just wrong. It was a hugely disappointing experience. Will not go back...

I am Vietnamese and Pho is one of my favorites. I don’t like being a critic for VN places but when one just doesn’t feel right, you know it’s bad. It’s my first time here and I wasn’t expecting much, just the basics. I definitely didn’t get the basics. I don’t know if it was bad timing, having pho for dinner, or supply chain issues. My experience wasn’t too great from so many positive reviews. Enough about my thoughts, here’s what I got.

I got the Pho Dac Biet which is the combo Pho. The server brought it out with one hand and the herb plate on the other. That’s red flag #1. If he’s able to carry it out in one hand, it means the Pho broth is not very hot and it wasn’t. Pho needs to be hot to the point where the server needs both hands to serve it to you. It felt more like luke warm.

The herb plate had a little bit of bean sprouts, slice of lime, and sliced jalapeños….where’s the basil? Red flag #2. I never been to a pho restaurant that didn’t serve basil. Idk, time of day, supply chain, or they don’t serve basil. It just didn’t seem right. Basil is the one herb that always goes with Pho and I didn’t have any.

I tasted the broth and it was ok. Every Pho place has their own taste and this was theirs, that’s ok. It did feel watered down though. Then I scooped up the pho noodles and they started breaking apart. Red flag #3…. Pho noodles should be cooked where they are tender but not over cooked where it’s breaking apart. I basically didn’t need my chopsticks cause I could’ve just scooped it up with my spoon.

Lastly the portion size seemed small. For the most expensive combo bowl, it should be enough to fill you up. I didn’t feel like I had enough meat or anything else. I was pretty much done other than a bowl of watered down broth and still felt hungry. That’s not a good sign for a Pho restaurant to still feel hungry afterwards.

I guess this is ok for American standards but for VN….no. I won’t be...