5iPho — Restaurant in Culver City

REVISION: We have to agree with those who said that this place has gone downhill. The food is definitely not as good as it was, and the kitchen has no ability to process special orders or get peoples' food to come out together. More often than not, my wife's Pho will come out 15 minutes before my main dish -- or something exactly the reverse. How hard is that? I also mention below loving the salt and pepper shrimp, but they're making it differently now and it's more of a breaded shrimp -- that seems to have neither salt, nor pepper! Also, some days we get a decent amount of shrimp, and other times a lot less. Again... consistency problems. Today's Chow Fun was a plate of glop. Sorry about this, as we used to LOVE 5i. If the owner reads this, PLEASE fix this, as we don't want to give up on your restaurant altogether. But we're very close to doing so. Changed from 5 stars to 3 stars.

• • • ORIGINAL POST BELOW - - - - We've been going here at least once a week since it opened. Their food is great, MUCH better than some others in the area. My wife loves their pho, and I cannot do without their salt and pepper shrimp, which is exquisite. They have all different types of Asian cuisine here (mostly Vietnamese and Thai). I also love their Singapore noodles -- which is a vermicelli type noodle with curry, with shrimp and chicken (and vegetables). Not a big, showy place -- just good food. GREAT...

Let me tell you why this sucks! If I tell you about the quality, quantity, service and prices, 5i Pho will get so busy that I won't get a parking space, they will be to busy to give me the top notch service I've grown accustomed to, and they may raise prices. So don't go to the 5i Pho. If you never taste the quality food, enjoy the more than ample portions, and feel like that scene from "Cheers" when Norm walks in. I will still have my favorite place to eat near my work. Man. It's not fair to the owner (whoever he or she is) that not everybody knows about this place. You know I think its the sucky name. Call it anything else. I will be honest with you, I've only had the appetizers here at the, 5i Pho. I get to satisfy my rather eclectic cravings. The people that I've taken here order off the full menu. everybody I've taken here became HUGE fans of this place. The parking BITES. I take a motorcycle more often than not. Look I'm not going to comment on all the menu items. Just give them a try. Maybe when they move to a larger place with more & better parking we can get them to rename the place....

I've been a regular at this place for 4+ years and it's always the same thing, great food but terrible service. Today I tried to call in for a to go order, the phone rang and went to a no operating voicemail multiple times, once someone picked up and then I was put on hold for almost ten minutes. It was short wait for our food but as we were leaving a disgruntled dine in customer was complaining how no one had come by to check in on them and how they ordered a while before we had even arrived and they still hadn't received their food as we were walking out. I wish I could say that was the first time I'd seen something like that here but it's not, it's happened to me a few times too.

I'm not going to not eat here anymore, it's good pho on this side of town for a reasonable price. But don't be fooled, this is not an ideal dine in situation and you're lucky if someone picks...