Berni Vietnamese Restaurant — Restaurant in San Antonio

Worse Pho in San Antonio. I eat a lot of pho all over the US. Check my other reviews. We ordered the $18 Super Bowl Special Combo (Pho dac biet, pho Bernie) They brought out my veggies and I noticed no Basil. So I asked for some. He says "we have not served basil at this location for 8 years, no one eats it). Basil is one of the largest flavor profiles in Pho. Reguardless if anyone is eating it or not, its required for basic Pho. The accompaniments here are 4 jalapenos, 1 spring of cilantro, few bean sprouts, and a single lime wege. This is for a 1 gallon sized soup. I was super hungry and craving Vietnamese food so I rolled with it. Looking at my soup and it still looks anemic. They did not put any of the tendon, tripe, or fat in my dish. Maybe no one eats that here as well? The man brings out a tiny bow with prob 1 total oz of a couple piece of tripe, a ball of fatty tissue, and a few small tendon. My disappointment did not end there. The meatballs were very tough and a low grade. If you want to count it as a positives they do give you a ton of them. Unfortunately we did not eat many. Broth was serverly lacking in beef flavor. Not much oils floating on the top. If they are making brother form scratch it's time to add more bones or cook for MUCH longer. Overall terrible experiences. This is not a location we will visit again. If your after authentic pho this is not the place for you. If you want watered down bland gentrified pho this is the place. Oddly we visited the other location a couple months ago. Their pho was excellent, full of flavor, and served with basil 😂. I left a 3 star review because my guest had dead flys in his lettuce wraps. I still raved about the actual soup and intended to give them a second chance. That location closed the next day. Whoever owns these resturants needs to take a hard look at their business and improve the quality of their product. Times are tough but cutting corners won't make you successful. Below edit for resturant response I don't care if it was $10 or $50. It was not good food. Raise prices if that's what you need to make quality food. I have been to easy 100 pho restaurants and reviewed 50. Never has a location said "no Basil". How do you make a spring roll? This is not Vietnamese food but a pale impersonation. Even if you had basil the food was...

There is a comfortable, consistent simplicity to this mom and pop restaurant. It's convenient, with excellent, purposeful, if utilitarian service. The menu is diverse, with an array of fine Vietnamese dishes beyond pho and probably the most reasonable facsimile of Vietnamese rice paper fried spring rolls on this side of town. But also some Chinese and Thai, and steamed edamame. It's a wonderful hodge podge of pan-Asain fare.

They usually have terrestrial radio on, but most times it is low. So, the relative smallness of the room with not much distance in seating has people in the quiet restaurant, slightly self-conscious of each other's volumes. Serviceable and always clean. Almost every time I have been, the same woman is cooking, and you can hear your food being prepared. For whatever reason, I chose pork fried rice tonight. I heard the wok fire up after the man called out the order, and I listened to all the wonderful steps adding and stirring the ingredients. So simple. So fresh. So delicious.

This is not a fancy place, but is not particularly inexpensive and on par with pricing at surrounding restaurants, but everyone who dines in gets a small cup of hot taro tapioca. I think they have a set of ingredients that they use across their menu for inventory freshness. Not everything on the menu is gold, but everything is made with this deep functional authenticity that keeps me and my family going back to explore this...

I'm near the USAA/Medical Center and typically go to Pho Hung Cuong on De Zavala/i10 for an easy vietnamese lunch fix. Went to Berni Vietnamese for the first time today and wow! Pho Hung Cuong is dead to me. Berni seves the best pho in San Antonio! I ordered beef and tendon pho: the broth was fragrant, flavorful, had a lot of depth from the bone base and springiness from the herbs, not too salty and still so full of flavor. The tendon was cooked fantastically, not tough and under-cooked like what I find in most pho places but soft and gelatinous as it should be. Price/Portion was great value: this place didn't skimp on the ingredients in quantity and quality. The decor is bright and refreshing, the waitstaff are polite and efficient, and I liked that, for lunch, you start with a cabbage soup and finish with a tarro tapioca pudding, all complementary! Overall, Berni Vietnamese exceeded my expectations on going out for lunch and is now my recommended place for pho. Can't...