SJ Restaurant — Restaurant in Pomona

I am a Vietnamese, just moved to Pomona so I am starving for real Vietnamese food. I found SJ as a saviour after having bad experience about food and service from Pho Ha ( even I order" to go" their staff who took order was rude) . I had to gave up all Pho,spicy beef noodle and Rice after trying to eat. It was almost 70 usd food went to trash bin since we could not try. It was not Vietnamese food, poor quality ingredients and lazy cooks which you can see obviously on the way how they make food for you.

I was like hopeless to find good vietnamese restaurant nearby my place but luckily SJ helped me out. I was doubtful when I first came but I gave a try. I was surprised how good and authentic their food was Pho: Good Pho has clear broth which is from beef bone and Pho spice, not blackish and look like there was dirt inside. They made it. The tenderness and fresh of Meats requires to be tender, juicy not soft like melting and dry like wood, they also made it and last but not least Pho vegetables is also important to enhance Pho flavor, you need a fresh look vegetables and here SJ they made it. My family was so happy to eat and empty the Pho bowl. Spicy beef noodle: this one is not easy to cook sinve it requires to have flavor of spices for this special noodle, I ate this bowl and I was satisfied with its flavour. They cooked it right way and used good noodle brand not cheap one like I tried before, you can feel from noodle's texture Broken rice: They used real broken rice not regular rice like the one I tried . The flavor and texture of broken rice and regular one are different. It would be cheating to mention " Com Tam - Broken Rice" but then you use regular long grain rice to sell to your customer. BBQ pork was tender and flavourful as well as steam egg was tender and fresh, very good fish sauce. Pad Thai: presentation look not attractive but when eating it was very delicious, the shrimp and chicken were tasty, fresh and juicy not as dry as wood like another place. Shaken beef rice: Beef was very tender even we tooked it home and warmed it up again with microwave.

I barely go to do review but I think I should since they are deserved for hard work. Their food was good with good price...

Saw a tiktok video made about this restaurant. Decided to try it since we were in town. We ordered some exact food they had on the tiktok video and they definitely did not taste or look the same. We had the fresh pork rolls, pho, and a beef dish. Our beef dish was filled with a bed of chopped lettuce with a few pieces of meat on top to make it look full. Our combination pho only had a few pieces of meat in it with 1/4 piece of meatball only! Pho portion was good. Our pork for the fresh rolls were so thinly sliced filled with chopped vegetables. You could barely taste the meat in it. We were very disappointed in our food. We couldn't even finish our food because everything tasted very plain so we left and grabbed food from a different restaurant. Food was also very pricey. I would not recommend this...

I have no idea how this place received 4.5 stars. We ordered chicken fried rice, 1 egg rolls, 2 pho, and 2 bone marrow soups. We could not even finish half of it. We left sick to our stomachs. We only ordered 1 order of egg rolls then brought out a 2nd half batch that we didn’t ask for and then charged us for 2 orders of egg rolls. The bone marrow was still frozen in the middle so we think they pulled it out of the freezer and reheated it. The fried rice was very dry. Unless you want to be up all night throwing up I would not recommend. Before we left we got a couple bobas and it was not the best decision. That was also disappointing, maybe bc she got our order completely wrong. We even told her we saw her make it wrong and she told us she didn’t. Sure enough...