Phở Bằng Restaurant — Restaurant in Louisiana

Went here while in town looking for great, authentic Vietnamese food. Checked out the menu online before arriving. Once we arrived, I saw that the menu prices were several dollars more per item than what they had online. No big deal, I thought. I understand the need to raise prices to make a decent profit. Ordered the fresh pork and shrimp spring rolls and beef pho. Wow, what a let down. The spring rolls were almost a warm temp...were they just storing the shrimp out of the fridge? The rolls were filled with very bland shrimp, tasteless pork, vermicelli noodles and lettuce. No basil, seasoning etc. The sauce that came with it was almost more of a gravy and tasted like it was out of a can or bottle. I had to add 4-5 ingredients to make it palatable. The pho was mediocre at best and I eat pho on a regular basis. Ordered water and not once was it refilled and no one ever came to check on us. We finished our meal and sat for about 10 minutes waiting for a bill, one server walked past, looked at our empty dirty dishes and kept walking. Finally, I decided to just go to the front and pay. When I saw the girl had rung in an extra $1, I asked what it was for and she told me it was for the water we drank that never was refilled. I asked if it was filtered water or tap. She said tap. I said I should at least be getting filtered if you're going to charge me, she responded with a giggle. They didn't even have it on the menu that they charge for city tap water out of the sink. With all the amazing Vietnamese food in Metairie and New Orleans, this place should really step it up. Spend your money elsewhere at a...

Today, we must have arrived at the restaurant close to the closing time because as soon as we got there they said we have 4 minutes to place an order. We were shocked but we were hungry so we said that was fine.

We go to Vietnamese restaurant ALL the time so we knew what we wanted.

When we started to order appetizers the waitress told us we could only order noodle soups. Nothing else. So we walked out.

My reasons for being pissed are:

1. If they were not going to serve everything in menu then they should have been upfront about it.
2. If they were not going to serve everything on the menu due to being close to closing time then they should have put closed sign and not accepted us as customers.

We are frequent visitors from Houston and I can guarantee you NOT A SINGLE ONE Vietnamese restaurant in Houston treats customers this way. As long as we are accepted in as a customers EVERYTHING on the menu is available amd we are NEVER told we have so many minutes to order because it is close to closing time.

This is BY FAR the most unpleasant experience I have ever experienced at any Vietnamese restaurant.

I wonder what the restaurant owner and staff think about customers. Probably not much more than money making opportunities. It is sad that this type of service is being rendered at a high rating restaurant.

Anyways, based on my experience, I do not recommend this...

I been coming to this place for over 20 years. So when I say something is off, you can book it. I haven’t eaten the pho here in quite a while and today just ordered it. It was the beef pho with beef round, brisket and meatballs. The broth had absolutely no beef flavor. If someone put the broth in front of me and blindfolded me and asked me to identify what it was, I’d say hot water. Whoever is the chef that made this could not have tasted it. It was absolutely watered down and before I even tasted it I noticed the color was off. It was not the deep beef color like it use to be. Now this might have been an off day, but the ratings appear to have been going down over the years. I don’t think I’ll take a chance again to get a bowl of hot water. I did order the Vietnamese fried pork rolls and they were alright— could have been...