Pho & Poke House — Restaurant in Durham

A quiet location that seems popular with the college crowd in a business park that offers both pho and poke. The decor is pleasant and simple, the staff is friendly enough despite being young and inexperienced. The seating is almost non-existent, there are maybe 5 tables available, so forget dining in on a busy night. Parking is in the rear of the building, and requires a little bit of a walk around the building to the door. During the day I could see the parking being a bit of a problem, in the evening it was pretty quiet.

The pho was pretty standard fare and pretty good. Nothing to write home about, but better than most in the area; they got the broth right and offered fresh ingredients.

The poke on the other hand was a disaster. First off, who runs out of tuna on a Friday night? I'm no poke expert, but tuna is pretty important when it comes to poke.

As a result, I was relegated to having a salmon substitute Spicy Ahi bowl. The poke wasn't seasoned at all. It was literally random sized pieces of half frozen salmon (yes, still frozen inside, not defrosted fully) tossed on top of my rice, topped with sesame seeds and masago. They then proceeded to put what amounted to spicy mayo all over the dish. Nowhere on the menu did they mention mayonnaise, but that was 85% of the "sauce". There wasn't much to say about the taste, the fish was half frozen, and the sauce was your standard spicy mayo. It wasn't even remotely spicy, but luckily there are bottles of sriracha on the table, which managed to save my meal.

Let me go ahead and say that there is way too much choice involved with the make-your-own poke bowl. This isn't like Chipotle, most people have no idea when it comes to poke. People will sit there and hem and haw and literally ask to put everything under the sun on their bowl, taking 10+ minutes to make a single bowl. So my on-the-menu bowl took almost 25+ minutes to be made since the staff was dealing with this make your own nonsense dominating their time. Meanwhile my date was almost done with her pho as we waited for my order to finally come out.

I would only recommend this place for pho, and only to go. Seating is extremely limited. The poke was woefully lacking. This was not even close to poke, I'd say it was more like a bad attempt at a Japanese chirashi box or Korean hoedeopbap. I'm sure it could be good in its own right if they had tuna in stock and I hadn't ordered something drowned in spicy mayo, but it was...

Just tried this restaurant for take out. I specifically asked if any of the protein options on the hot dishes were gluten free. The lady at the register checked with the kitchen and they said the tofu was the only gluten free option they have right now. I ordered the tofu Bún (vermicelli noodles). It took a rather long time for the order to come out, for how few customers were there. I unfortunately did not check it before I left. They completely forgot the Nước chấm sauce, so it was dry and fairly flavorless. The tofu was FRIED. I wish they had mentioned that. I ate a couple of pieces, but was too sketched out to keep eating them. I was right to be. Just those 2 pieces made me sick. I really hope someone from the restaurant reads this so they realize that fryers transfer gluten from gluten containing things like eggrolls to the originally gluten free things like tofu. If you do not fry it separately, DO NOT call it gluten free. If you aren't sure if something is gluten free, tell the customer that. I'd rather a restaurant refuse to serve me, than spend the next week being sick to my stomach, just because they...

Distasteful All Around Do not try the Pad Thai! It’s disgusting and I love Pad Thai. I was really looking forward to sitting down on their outdoor patio to try this place out. I took one bite and thought “oh no”. When I went to swap it for the Drunken Noodles, which I don’t love as much but looked like the right flat noodle, I was told that they would not do that. I was polite and let them know that i didn’t like it but was willing to try something else. When they refused I reminded them that as a customer I want to support their business and I understand that if they’re closing the kitchen I would have whatever was still hot they told me no… and that because I ordered and didn’t like it, it was my issue. The lady at the register said she didn’t have a number to the owner nor the passwords to make a refund possible.

I told them that was fine and let them know I’d be leaving this review. Don’t waste your time. My husband eats here often with his office and hates it as well. I was giving...