Quán Nem Ninh Hòa — Restaurant in Elk Grove

First time eating here and last.

I don't do reviews at all, but let it be known.

I'm not sure why this place is ranked so high. It may be because it's one of the few pho places in Elk Grove...or people have not had a great bowl of pho.

-First female waitress was ok. Then we got a different female waitress...and then a male waiter. -Service was slow even though it was not busy. Maybe due to young inexperienced staff? -Pho took a while to come out. I can accept 10-minutes, but when it's nearing 30-minutes, that's not acceptable. It should be stewing all day in the kitchen, so that shouldn't be an issue. -As I received my pho. We were still waiting for a rice dish which we waited another 5 minutes as they might have forgot until I had to get the attention of the male waiter to tell them we were still missing the rice plate. Another 10 minutes go by and we receive the rice plate. Then we find out it's missing the eggroll. The male waiter tells us it will be coming. -We were already upset at this point as this was supposed to be a quick dinner. -As I waited for the person eating the riceplate to finish. I see that there were also takeout order customers waiting for their food by the front of the restaurant which should have been ready when they arrived to pick up. -This was the end of it. We go up to pay at the register and informed them that they forgot the eggroll. He tells us to wait as he goes to get the eggroll (overcooked as I saw it) and puts it in a to go box. We pay and leave the take out box behind. -Pho was watery. Not a lot of meats, especially no tendon. -Rice plate was plain with no flavor. -Service sucked and there was no sense of urgency or correctness. -If I could give ZERO stars, I would. ONE OF THE WORST PHO...

It's just a standard low key dining place

Their house special number 1 specialty is the nem which is a special bbq grilled coarse ground pork dish. You can have it pre wrapped but some of us opted to self wrap with rice paper and vegetables fixings. While done had the already wrapped nem. One of the special part of this dish is the shrimp sauce. I had this a few years ago ago their other location and was highly impressed. Today I give it 3stars/5. I have had this specialty much much better shipped from LA. This was highly disappointing bc it is supposed to be the best--people drive up from SJ to eat this. Not that spectacular. The meat was ok and special shrimp sauce only ok

The pork chop rice plate was sooo very disappointing also 1.5/5. When you've eaten from great rice place in SJ. This is bad. The meat was dry and not flavorful. Rather bland. The egg roll was 0/5 stars and the fried egg was 2/5.

The banh beo steamed shrimp "cakes" was excellent in the other hand. One of my favorite dishes and done excellently here 4.5/5 stars

The green leafed wrapped banh loc is banana leaf steamed pocket. It's only ok 2/5 stars

My friend had a vegetarian bun dish inedible. We were all starving and the food was horrible. She couldn't eat even half of her bowl

Very...

We got sat down pretty quick but the service was awful. We ordered 2 phos, 1 iced coffee and fried egg rolls as appetizer. The wait for our food took forever even though they wasn't busy. We had to ask for our egg rolls 3 times and when we finally got it it was spring rolls. I went and told our server that we got the wrong order. Our server said it's right we ordered spring rolls. But actually it was the party next to us. At this time we were almost with done with our pho. I told him to forget the egg roll order and asked a 3rd time for our iced coffee which took another 5 mins. What sealed this awful experience was when I found hair in my pho soup. I went up to the cashier and told her my problem and that we were not going to pay for the food. They were hesitant about me not paying but then they said it was fine and we left. 1st time...