Pho Lantern Cafe — Restaurant in Costa Mesa

A-OK. It's a pho place that has opened in an older shopping center in desperate need of renovation, not just remodeling. Still, there is good effort on behalf of the restaurant owners, but it just doesn't live up to competitors in the area.

When I order a pho dac biet, I expect to see ngo gai (sawtooth herb) and a variety of meats in my soup. Instead, it's the standard fare here, flank, brisket, sliced beef, meatball. Portion size small, lack of creative portions of beef, and the herb plate is super basic (bean sprouts, lime, Thai basil). No cilantro, no mint, just the minimum basics.

Hey don't get me wrong, you want to give me the basics, I'm totally cool with that, but then don't charge me $8.95 for a basic bowl of pho.

Maybe I'm just spoiled coming from Phoenix, but over there I could get a bigger bowl of pho, super large portions of beef (and many different kinds) not to mention a variety of herbs on my vegetable plate (and extra free vegetables if I asked!) for less than 5 bucks.

I've been told that California is just more expensive to set up shop in, but then how do you explain how Banh Mi Che Cali just a little further south can pull it off for only $6.99? Very basic pho there, but a more appropriate price point (still not 5 bucks though).

I also ordered a Thai tea here once and was shocked at the price point of $3.95 for a large, basically 4 bucks. Hey, I wouldn't be complaining if it was actually a large size, but it doesn't feel like one.

All in all, if you ignore prices, it's just an okay experience. Factor in prices, and I'm scratching my head why people would come here when there's more affordable pho places that serve bigger portions at reasonable prices. But hey, as a customer, you choose where...

VERY POOR SERVICE … which is unfortunate because the food is usually decent here… but the service on our last visit was absolutely awful, despite my best efforts to explain what we wanted. My son and I ordered chicken SPRING rolls and a large bowl of chicken and vegetable pho, both WITHOUT cilantro - which I very clearly explained to the server. Unfortunately, the spring rolls came back as fried egg rolls, so we sent them back. The egg rolls were replaced by pork and shrimp spring rolls (not chicken), which despite not being the chicken ones we ordered, we decided to just keep and eat… BUT they turned to be full of cilantro!! Third was the pho, which arrived covered with cilantro, so here again, we sent the dish back. Three minutes later, they returned with the same dish from which they had just scraped the top - still a bunch of cilantro leaves had slipped down into the soup. When I called on the lady to explain the issue, she literally looked like she had no idea what I was talking about, and in mid-sentence, she didn’t acknowledge any of what I had just told her, she just turned away and went back to the kitchen, never to be heard from again. I strongly suspect some communication challenge here, but I simply don’t know how to resolve it. Unfortunately I will not be setting foot in this restaurant ever again. The food is fine but the service is severely and...

Our family really wanted to like this place. Google review was above 4 stars. We called and they were kind enough to hold a table that seats six. When we arrived at the restaurant, the food coming out of the kitchen looked pretty good as they were on the way to the customers. Unfortunately, the "good" ended there.

The restaurant immediately became chaotic. Service took a while to grab our order. Other customers had to wave to the servers for us to get their attention for service.

Now for the "bad". The Pho Dac Biet and the kids meal pho soup (3 orders - 2 chicken and 1 beef) arrived warm/near cold instead of hot. The fried egg rolls were hardly crispy. The Pho Dac Biet should have rare steak like all the others that came out of the kitchen. Ours, again, was not only served near cold, but had much less serving compared to other Pho restaurants and did not have the rare steak. The first set that came out of the kitchen must have sat waiting to be served for sometime. The 2nd set of food which was the beef salad and bbq pork with rice were served hot and well seasoned.

We may give it another try if we're in the general area. Right now wouldn't recommend based on our...