Mama Pho (by Bedford Gardens) — Restaurant in New York

Mama Pho is, in all essence, strictly a phở shop with some appetizers to complement it. First time for us at a Vietnamese restaurant usually consist of the basics, so I got the Đặc Biệt (also known as phở #1). It usually has raw sliced beef that cooks in the broth when they serve it and tripe for that chewy texture, and here they give you meatballs (bò viên).

Phở rubrics scoring (1-5): Noodles - 5 - the noodles were loose and not clumped together. When I grabbed some with my chopstick, it came up like curtains, meaning they refreshed the noodles just before serving.

Broth - 5 - unlike chicken broth, beef broth for this should be clear with a slight dark tint. There are no traces of fat and oil bubbles and all the scum from the bones have been strained out. The taste of the star anise is distinct and the overall flavor is full (not watered down).

Meats - 5 - the rib eye was fresh and had a good pink to it bc of the steam of the broth. The meatballs were al dente and warm on the inside.

Condiments - 2 - It's common practice to supplement your soup with veggies to taste yourself, but not here. They didn't give us a plate of veggies to complement our soup, instead rationing bean sprouts and lime in our bowl. I personally add extra peppers and lots of bean sprouts. Its a huge nono in my eyes for places to charge extra for this.

15 is our threshold for a revisit so thumbs up here. We use a rubrics standard in our workplace to give a granular grading system and to not be deterred because of 1 thing, like the condiments here. IG...

Went there yesterday since I was really craving some pho. I got the pho tai with meatball. I’ll start with the positives, the bowl is huge and there is a good amount of broth. The broth itself was a little flat but my main problem was the meat. The meat used is eye of round which typically is a very lean cut however I found the meat in my pho to be very fatty. The broth was also not hot enough to quickly cook the meat. Already disappointed by the eye of round I set out in search for the meatball hoping it would salvage the pho and what I found was literally a singular meatball that had been cut in half to qualify this bowl of pho as pho tai with meatball. So I guess, the menu is correct in stating meatball since that is truly what I received, a singular meatball, but based on past pho experiences it was another disappointment in my bowl. I found that the noodle to broth ratio was too heavily skewed towards that of the broth so I was left wanting more noodles. Lastly, a minor point regarding the pho was that there was no little dish of veggies (lettuce, bean sprouts, limes) that accompanied, rather they had already added some bean sprouts and a lime to the bowl. Personally, I really like the little dish of veggies since I like a lot of green in my pho but that is a personal bias and did not change the rest of my pho experience.

Side note, I also ordered the Thai tea which was small for $5 and very average in taste.

Overall, the broth is decent but the contents left a lot...

Good flavor, but were over priced and the service wasn’t efficient. We clearly ordered a classic banh mi with jalapeños, but were really disappointed with what we got. We looked forward to the complexity of the picked carrots and cilantro and jalapeño, unfortunately, none of that was present in this sandwich. They skipped out on all the major toppings and forgot about the jalapeños. Another disappointment was the packaging. We completely understand that No one eats the packaging, but it has to be appealing to the eye. The sandwich was wrapped in wax paper and held with rubber bands. They could have had so many other options for wrapping up to go orders, and they chose to go for this. Half of the sandwich was exposed and not fully covered (this might violate some safety food handling standards). Sorry to sound so hurt over something so small, but it was the price, the overall presentation and the lack of listening to the customer, is what upset us and made us leave this type...