Pho Vn 21 — Restaurant in Houston

I am split between 3 and 4 stars. I think the place is what it is. I just simply did not know what it is since a family friend chose the restaurant. So this place is not for everyone -- but if you like this type of restaurant, this place may deserve 4 stars.

Let me start with the biggest concern: We were a party of 12 folks. Everyone ordered different things. The waiter (proprietor?) insisted on us having a single bill. His notes were unreadable (Vietnamese?) and as I stood at the cashier, he rang up a bunch of food that I had no way of checking was correct. He seemed confused himself and added and removed several dishes several times. I guess I could have taken the final bill which did list individual items back to the table to check with everyone, if this was truly what we had consumed. But (1) our party was already in the process of leaving (2) it would have been difficult anyway and (3) the bill per person was fairly low ($10 * 12 = $120) so I did not feel it was worth the trouble. However, I don't like paying bills that I do not understand. I would have preferred if each table (we occupied 3) had paid their own bill with roughly 4 people each.

The good: The food was inexpensive. The food was served quickly. The place seemed reasonably clean.

The okay: The food tasted good. I am not an expert of Vietnamese food, so I cannot say if it was excellent or just average. I had a soup and a cold vegetable roll -- both was fine.

The bad: The server (proprietor?) came across as rude. To be fair his English was somewhat limited. He made it very clear that he was going to close shop in 30 mins as we sat down. He moved tables together for our party of 12 which was nice. He rushed us to order (somewhat understandable as we only had 30 mins). Later he ran his cleaning card into my wife's shoulder and did either not notice or ignored it: There was no apology. Further down the table, he pressed 2 young ladies in ordering quickly as they were exploring the menu (they themselves not being native English speakers). One of the ladies felt so annoyed that she decided not to order anything (so maybe my rough calculation of how much we spent per person should be $11). So this was not ideal either.

The atmosphere of the place is very bare bones. The restaurant is located in strip mall with convenient parking outside. The walls are barren with a few inexpensive looking decorations. The kitchen in the back is open and visible. The tables and seats are barren and simple. But this may all go nicely with a $10 per...

Pho Vn 21 is a phenomenal restaurant with fast takeout, good portion sizes, great prices, and generous servings of protein.

I ordered the large #18 pho which included eye round steak, soft tendon, fatty brisket, and well done flank. The hostess was very kind. Food came out in about 10 minutes nicely wrapped.

When I opened the to-go box, I was excited to see big portions of each of the meats that were included. My pet peeve in pho is when they don't give you a good ratio of noodles and meat, or when they give you a very uneven portion of each of the included proteins so that you're left wishing there was just a little more of one of them. They did a great job of including a healthy helping of each! They also included a generous amount of Thai basil, cilantro, onions, green onion, jalapeño, bean sprouts, and the premixed hoisin/Sriracha sauce. I could tell that each of the ingredients were very fresh, especially the vegetables - slightly surprising too given that I had ordered near closing time.

Although the broth in the container was still too hot to handle, I opted to bring it to a boil in a pot anyway to ensure everything was heated well in the bowl. After pouring, I started with a spoonful of broth - it was very smooth and packed with flavor, but also still nice and light at the same time. I think this may have been because the majority of the flavor came from the robust aromatics and oil that were infused in the broth, which complemented the depth and savoriness of the clear beef broth very well. Interestingly, the broth was also sweeter than most other broths I have had, but in a good balanced way that combined well with the other flavors. I ended up liking the broth so much that I didn't bother adding anything else in it. The jalapeños added a nice mild spicy kick, which I loved as I prefer things spicy

Overall, this was an amazing bowl of pho packed with flavor and served in a generous portion, especially for takeout. And for only $8? It's almost too good to be true. Do yourself a favor and give this...

This is my first time coming to this establishment. After a long day at work and my Mother said she wanted to try this restaurant. We walked in at 8:16 and got seated by a nice lady who put the two menus in front of us. Before we could even finish reading the menu, a man came in and asked for the order. I told him to give us a minute since this was our first time here. He did not seem welcoming, in fact he said the kitchen was about to close and everyone will walk about the door at 9PM, that gave us exactly 35 mins to order and finish eating. This is not what a customer would expect from a restaurant in this economy. I was triggered by this action but I thought of my Mother and how hungry she must be, we would just finish this order. I chose combo 1 and she chose seafood Pho. The waiter asked for my drink and I said a Coca-Cola would be nice, then he chuckled out loud rudely about my choice. At this point we just did not want to be here anymore, but we are nice people, we ordered, we ate, we paid and tipped. He made sure we paid and walked out the door 8:55PM. The worst part was couple people came in after us did not receive the same treatment - there was no mentioning about closing time to them. This made us think we were being targeted but when I read about the reviews on this page, it is the norm of how they treat the customers here. Do we want to be back? No. Will we be recommending this place? No. Did we feel bad about the whole situation? Yes. We wish we didn't make the choice of coming here today. Good luck to your business. I hope you choose to do better and treat your customers a little better. We paid for a good service, not for a...