HOUSE OF PHO — Restaurant in Framingham

5/3/2025: Short and sweet bc Google has a character limit and don’t want to edit my previous review- decided to give this restaurant another chance, bc I have been dying for fresh rolls, and it’s getting harder to find them on menus.

Now have online ordering, which made it a lot easier than calling and needing to know the menu item number when you don’t know you need to know that. Also get an order tracking link.

At home, opened my food, and there was a giant hair across all 4 of the spring rolls. Just lying there, stuck to the gummy rice paper wrappers.

So there goes that, I tossed out the food and I won’t be back.

10/2024: My review is specifically for takeout.

I called at 630pm tonight and placed an order for chicken fresh rolls and rare beef round eye pho. I was asked the numbers of the items, but not knowing that I was supposed to have those ready, I had already closed the menu. The woman said she was checking which number for the fresh rolls, and said G6. Okay, if you say so.

I was given a pickup time of 30 minutes.

I got there right at the 30 minute mark. It was packed - good for them. I take what I think was the last parking space, and go inside. No one acknowledges me, and it isn’t quite clear where to go, so I just go to the counter. I might be misreading things, but they seemed annoyed by it. There’s one bag in the takeout shelf. I asked about my food, and am told it’s not ready yet. That’s a bummer and I’m starving, but okay. I move to the door to get out of the way.

I am asked by someone else how many to be seated, and I say that I’m waiting for my takeout order. He asks me to have a seat at the door - no problem.

From there, I am completely ignored during this time. This doesn’t bother me until the table that was being sat when I got there gets their appetizers; meanwhile I’m still waiting for food I ordered 45 minutes ago. After an additional five minutes (now 50 minutes since I placed my order), I go back to the counter and ask about my food. The woman (a different person than the first woman who told me it wasn’t ready) grabs it off the shelf - the same food that has been sitting there since I walked in 20 minutes ago.

I literally said, “so it’s been ready this whole time? I was told it wasn’t out yet and I’ve been sitting there for 20 minutes waiting.” I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m now hangry and my food is just getting cold and the raw beef is just growing bacteria while I sit here. I’m not impressed. I’m less impressed with the way both women, both the first who told me it wasn’t ready and this second woman, just looked at me. Not even an apology.

The second woman gives me the total and I’m kind of fuming and I reach to get my wallet, and she repeats the total in a tone that sounded like she thinks I don’t know I have to pay. But as I’m handing over my card, the first woman goes to punch in someone else’s bill and the second woman shrugs, puts my card down, and walks away!

I finally get out of there and get home with my now room temp food. I go for the fresh rolls first, and immediately find that G6 is pork, not chicken. I don’t like pork but I don’t avoid it so this is not my favorite, especially after the prior 30 minutes of hassle, but fine, I’ll eat them. They aren’t bad, just not my thing.

I reheat the soup broth, and the flavor is pretty good. Not the best I’ve had but better than the other local option that I know of. It definitely is better with chili crisp.

But the rice noodles! The noodles are congealed together in a brick in the takeout box, which isn’t great but they should separate in the broth. Except half of the rice noodles are still raw! To cook them I needed to heat the broth again and soak them for 20 minutes, which is not what I’m looking to do when I paid for dinner and then waited an hour for it.

I’m not saying I’ll never go back but I will think about it before giving them another shot. I was so excited to have a new Vietnamese restaurant to go to but I’m thinking this isn’t the place to go for takeout - maybe it’s not the place to go...

Unfortunately I can't give this restaurant a fair review because the opportunity was never afforded to either myself or my wife. I'm hoping the owner of this establishment takes my post to heart and internalizes my message instead of dismissing it off hand. This is a fairly new establishment which can determine the future success of a restaurant, especially when customers have a wide range of options, advice should be welcomed, but first my story.

My wife and I excitedly agreed to come here because we are both foodies and enjoy all kinds of food, restaurant styles, and experiences. We are not high brow only or high maintenance diners, nor picky "Karens", and we always treat and tip our wait staff well because it's a demanding job, but we do have a high standard for quality food and being treated fairly and regarded kindly.

We came on a Sunday afternoon in early November and the restaurant was bustling, which is a good sign. Unfortunately two people arrived just before us and we missed our opportunity to be directly seated. That's ok, we were very excited and happy to wait. A waitress greeted us warmly, offered us some temporary seating, and presented us with two menus so that we could start reviewing the choices. Happy town. The place was loud and exciting, because it's small, and lots of people crammed in a small dining area. Still fine but may not be everyone's cup of tea. It's small enough that I as a patron can see an open table but didn't think anything of it because they may have been cleaning it off for us.

About five minutes later, a party of four come in, somewhat rudely penetrate the small restaurant past us directly to the main hostess area, and held up four fingers to indicate their need. The main hostess, completely oblivious to us, immediately sat them, looked as us, and went about her business. This was the moment I lost my cool because in this day and age of declining customer service, rising prices, and general disregard for civility, I had enough.

I went up to the hostess and levied my complaint. She cooly said, "oh sorry, we haven't served them yet" which insinuated they were going to kick them out.The original waitress said, 'Oh sorry, no other tables, sorry". No offer of compensation, and instead we have to be the bad guys to kick someone else out, which we didn't do, and chose to leave instead.

This place needs to get their act together because the first step of organizing a good restaurant is receiving guests and treating them like they want them there. I'm happy to rescind my review if the owner wants to speak to me about our experience, but for...

I will preface this by saying that I know this is a soft opening and I really wanted to enjoy this restaurant. I debated on leaving this review, however I feel compelled to. My dining companion and I walked in, the staff was friendly. The restaurant appeared clean with a limited number of tables. They are also starting with a limited number of items from their menu. Completely understandable for a soft opening. There was a language barrier with our server. We both asked for no onions in the Pho. She appeared a little confused. We both got onions. We also received different spring rolls then the ones we ordered. The Pho had a nice tasting broth, however it was extremely light for Pho. We both had the Pho Dac Biet. My dining partner had a lot of meat and no tendon. Mine had very little meat and did have a couple of tendons. We also found the rice noodles to be clumped together. The sauces were on the table. The Hoisin sauce was extremely thin, or watered down, perhaps homemade.The spring roll did taste fresh and had a really nice dipping sauce. I can live with the above mistakes on a soft opening. The reason for the one star and why I am writing this review is because both of us within twenty minutes of leaving, I will politely say had gastrointestinal issues. I really debated writing this until I talked with a foodie friend that had also tried it and had the same gastrointestinal issues. I honestly hope that they figure out how to improve. I might many months from now give them a...