Pho Luca's — Restaurant in Richmond

UPDATE: I made my way back to pho Luca and this time they did a much better job with the flavoring of the broth. I understand the owner mentioned that the broth cooking down could cause the saltiness so I came at the same time as my previous review but didn't have any issues. The portion size was okay being I do wish there were 1.5x the noodles. I'm not asking for a big strainer full but definitely more than 10 big bites worth. Overall a big improvement from last time. Again the staff were friendly and responsive.

OROGINAL: I have eaten at Pho Lucas 10+ times and it's normally decent but today I had a rather bad experience. The food took around 40 minutes to come out, for an order of a sandwich and a bowl of pho that seems like a ridiculously long wait. Especially since the table sat next to us who arrived and ordered 20 minutes after we did got their food first.

The Bahn Mi was good but the pho was not anywhere close. The broth was so salty. I had added nothing to it but you could barely taste the beef through the just salt and umami. My mouth was somehow dry eating soup from all the salt. To me there were no aromatics detectable only salt with a hint of beef. It very much tasted like someone had dumped Magi seasoning sauce into the broth to point it was mostly the seasoning sauce. The round steak meat was completely cooked by the broth before it even got to me but the brisket was good.

The servers were very kind even if it felt like they were...

It was a late night as we just flew back in town and was craving some vietnamese food. Our usual go to was closed so we decided to try Pho Luca's, one because they have been on our list to try and 2 they were open till 11pm. We got there at about 8pm and got seated promptly. The waitress came by to take our drink orders and informed us the menu was very limited since it was later. Keep in mind it was only 8pm and they close at 11. We were craving fresh spring rolls, a broken rice plate and or cold noodle vermicelli bowls which are a staple in every vietnamese restaurant. Upon looking at the menu, we realized they did not offer the fresh spring rolls at that time and they didn't even have broken rice plates or vermicelli noodles on their regular menu. We ended up just ordering two bowls of pho. After putting in our order, we waited...and waited 45 minutes until our food came out. I understand they make everything from scratch which is awesome, but 45 minutes? for pho?? At about 9pm, we saw a group of 3 walk-in to get seated and they were informed that the kitchen has closed and were not taking any orders. Kitchen closed at 9??? But the restaurant closes at 11pm on a Saturday. While we were eating, there was music playing. But, it was very loud and had cussing. The only good thing about our experience was the quality of food. The broth of our pho was very very yummy. It just tasted clean and had very...

Pho places are hardly a rarity in Richmond. West end in particular is absolutely saturated. Being a 9 to 5 tedious business job cube monkey, I've eaten at many of them to briefly escape from my exciting job. I must admit I was surprised to see a pho spot pop up in Carytown. Pho usually fills the niche semi-fast food lunch market, not the date-night Carytown vibe. Having now tried it, I must congratulate Pho Luca as standing out among the sea of options. While most pho places taste fairly similar to one another, Luca is genuinely unique. The noodles are firm, not limp like many other places. The meat is of an obviously higher quality. It doesn't have the conveyor belt feel of West End spots. Most notable, the broth is stellar, easily the best I've had. It was genuinely excellent pho. I'm almost compelled to lower my ratings of other pho spots. To be clear there are plenty of great pho places with limp noodles and conveyor belt soup. What strikes me about Luca is how different they are despite serving fundamentally the same dish. If I had to complain, I'd say their vegetarian options are very limited. My wife, a vegetarian, was relegated to basically one option, which was good, but her only real choice. She would have liked to see a vegetarian pho, which you can find elsewhere. If you're interested in the traditional beef pho, though, I enthusiastically recommend Luca. Five...