Pho Huong Lan — Restaurant in Orlando

I’ve been to this restaurant many times, even since it first opened, and I could be considered a regular. But I have never had such a bad experience as this time. Since my group consisted of 16 people, I called an hour ahead to reserve a table, hoping we wouldn’t have to wait—but that wasn’t the case. Thinking back on that day feels like a nightmare. I felt like I came begging for food.

I arrived 10 minutes early to prepare, but when I went to the counter and asked a staff member about my reservation, I was met with rude remarks. “Excuse me, I reserved a table in advance,” I said politely. I understand that the place was very crowded, but instead of asking me to wait politely, she responded in a way that felt dismissive, as if they didn’t need customers. She said something like, “If you can’t wait, then go somewhere else.” I couldn’t understand why someone in the service industry would talk like that—was the restaurant just so full that they didn’t care about customers anymore?

Anyway, about 10 minutes later, the boss called to ask where I was, which surprised me because I had just been dismissed. He apologized, and our group happily moved over to Hương Lan 2. The space there was indeed more spacious than the first location, but the food wasn’t as good, and the noodles were undercooked. If the restaurant is too crowded, then don’t take reservations. And if the staff member’s attitude is poor, don’t have them dealing with customers. Just do first-come, first-served—it would be better. Don’t throw that kind of attitude...

The food is okay, but the service is awful when you choose to dine-in. You can tell that they’re trying to turn over tables as quickly as possible, and sometimes they’ll ask if they can seat random people at your table to accommodate for how small their space is. Today, we came in for lunch and it took a while to be seated, which we were fine with waiting, but the server and owner kept asking us over and over what our name was on the list and if we even put our name on the list, when we clearly did and I told them multiple times. After being seated, we ordered our food and asked for some drinks with our meal. After our food arrived, we waited for our drinks which inevitably did not come. As we watched drink after drink come out of the kitchen to customers who ordered after us, we decided to remind the server about our drinks. I guess this was annoying to them even though this wasn’t our fault. After our meal, we decided we wanted to take an extra meal home and ordered another bowl to go. The server was annoyed by this and shook her head at us, she told us to order earlier next time and told us that we had already order drinks after our meal came. We have never had a server be bothered by asking for a meal to-go at the end, and we did not order our drinks after our meals came. It feels wrong that they were annoyed at us for THEIR mistake. I will also say that their meatballs are very lackluster, almost ruins the...

The first time we ate here it was very good, but the following 5 times it has been mediocre or subpar.

We will not be returning and DO NOT RECOMMEND (we're Vietnamese btw) because of the service and the mediocre food. Our server was the skinny lady who is probably the owner or relative of the owner/manager. She told us the pho ga would take 30 minutes and when we asked if it was ok to wait she reluctantly agreed (she could have just said no??) as though we were an inconvenience. And then oddly enough the pho ga came out before everyone else's order without any explanation??! Then she missed an order (that we repeated twice) and shook her head at us as though we did something wrong when she realized it...?? And when it came out it wasn't correct (!!), but we didn't say anything because we didn't want to deal with a more misplaced attitude...

We told the guy (owner? manager?) at the register and he obviously didn't care and was also dismissive. Sad that we can't continue supporting our own people and learning nothing beats Mom's pho still.

The lady next to us eats there 3 times a week and referred to it as a place that is constantly trying to turn tables and get people out and in. Not a good vibe imo.

TLDR; mediocre or subpar pho and bun bo hue (salty, no depth of flavor, no onions in pho). Rude servers that we're pretty sure was also...