An Loi — Restaurant in Columbia

🤷🏾‍♀️ TL;DR: The food is just ok. Seems like it might be a decent eat at the restaurant, but the flavors leave much to be desired.

🪷 Backstory: Vietnamese food is one of my favorite cuisines on Earth. I've eaten a lot of dishes over the years, in Philly, where my high school friends first introduced me to pho, to New York City, Reading, PA, and now Maryland. I've been blessed to dine in the homes of people who immigrated from Saigon to the US in the 80s, and I will cherish those memories forever. Those flavors are imprinted in my mind. That said, I am serious about Vietnamese food and am very familiar with a lot of dishes that rarely see a restaurant menu. Pho and Bun Bo Hue are among my favorites.

👍🏾 Delivery: Tonight my usual pho place wasn't available for delivery, so I gave An Loi a try. I ordered the An Loi Pho with all the fixings (tripe included), and a side of the Spring rolls on DoorDash. An Loi confirmed my order immediately, and my order arrived without incident. Everything was well packaged and lovingly labeled for each diner (my partner and I). Sadly, I didn't really care for any of my dishes.

👎🏾 Pho: The noodles were packaged at the bottom of one of those paper Chinese food containers with the meats piled on top, and were overcooked well before I added them to my broth. The broth was more salty than it was beefy, and did not taste like traditional broth, which takes hours of boiling beef bones with distinct aromatics. The bean sprouts and basil provided were crisp and fresh. I added my own Sriracha since the tiny sauce container was mostly hoisin sauce.

👍🏾 Spring Rolls: As for the spring rolls, they were pretty good. They weren't super crispy, but that's a tall order for delivery. The fish sauce dip tasted pretty good, and like what I would expect.

🙏🏾 The meal wasn't inedible, but it didn't scratch that itch for me. Thank you to everyone who worked so hard to get...

We actually left the restaurant after waiting 10 minutes. Water came promptly, but no wait staff came for 10 minutes.I went to the register to basically order at the register so the wait staff wouldn't have to come to my table and I basically was pointed to the one waiter working the restaurant. It's 6:30 on a Saturday night and they only have one waiter. There were open tables, so I have no idea what the issue was. I asked a waitress to put my order in (she had taken my order tons of times); didn't say a word and pointed at the one guy taking orders.

There were four people working there, but only one was allowed to take orders. So basically - only one person was only allowed to make tips that night.

After I got back to our table, I told the kids to get their jackets so we could go to another restaurant that wanted to take our order. The manager behind the register was behind me, with a pad, ready to take my order. I told her I had been waiting around 10 minutes and if they were too busy to take my order, then I would just leave and go somewhere else.

She said the other people weren't allowed to take orders (I have been there tons of times, and they have all waited on us before), and said sorry they were really busy. They actually weren't busy - they were just mismanaging...

I will admit... the first time I came here I was not impressed. Since then, I have returned a handful of times and the food is MUCH better.

I noticed that when ordering carry out, the food isn't as good. They give you the old and not so fresh veggies and herbs, compared to when you are dining in. So I strongly suggest dining in when coming here!

Parking is always pretty easy - no matter the time of day.

Service is okay. It can be hit or miss here.

My friend likes the beef pho soup, but I think their cut of meats aren't good quality. And they aren't very generous at all with meat portions. I always get their vegetable pho which is baby corn, straw mushrooms, napa cabbage and broccoli.

The summer rolls with shrimp as well as the vegetarian summer rolls are both good. The first couple times - they were not fresh and well wrapped. But much improvement!

I am really glad my experience with them has improved. They are really one of the only Vietnamese restaurants in the area and I frequent this place with...