Pho Sao Bien Vietnamese Restaurant — Restaurant in San Diego

When I lived in Pacific Beach many moons ago..this place started my pho addiction. After several years I have crept back to my old local haunts and this was the latest. So lets go location first and this is thr only reason for 4 instead of 5. If I could do a .5 I would. Its on Garner ave tucked away next to a animal boutique . parking is a pain, especially if you have a SUV or truck. A small lot so watch your bumpers. There is parking in back ( disabled friendly) that's more,forgiving than Garnet traffic but still small area and spaces. The food. I got a Bahn mi pork Sammie and a bowl of rare steak, flank and brisket. The Sammie was delicious. I like how they serve the pickled veggies and huge sluces of jalapeno on the side, along with cilantro..ok maybe the bread wasn't fantastic, perfect baguettes can make a bahn mi but the pork was chard bbq awesome and picked veggies including pickle sliced cucumber to match the jalapeno. Thier broth is a bit more aubtle than most, good salt and lots of lemon grass..if you like refined over meaty you will love it. The meat is where it shines, lots of pink rate steak, melt away brisket and chewy flank. The noodles hold the broth well and don't make it a 5 min game of trying to get a mouth full while its sliding off your chop sticks..add some sriracha and hosin and it still holds its identity. The ice tea was ..bleh..kind of weak but oh well. Clean and friendly staff plus for under $13 for a great bowl of pho and a yummy Sammie..still...

The food for the most part is very good. I had ordered a pho bowl of soup...which im sure would have been good (my friend liked hers) but they had put some vegetable or spice in my broth that I did NOT like. When I asked if I could get something else, because I didnt like it, i just a blank stare...like he didnt understand me when I said i didnt like it. When he brought me the chicken fried rice (which is the dish i chose after not liking the soup) my friend asked if ue could remove the soup from the table.....and again a blank stare...he asked us where he should take it!? We said uhhh to the kitchen? I dont know u can eat it it u want...but i do not want it b/c i dont like it! He took it but looked completely lost as to what to do with it. We also ordered the fried eggroll appetizer which was was delicious! The only other problem was that while ur eating the guy behind the desk and the waiter just stare u down while u eat. I felt like i was in a fish tank. And couldnt talk loud cuz they'd hear every word u say. But other then that....the food was good. But i couldnt get them to understand that i didnt like the soup and thats why i sent it back...they charged me...

Terrible, cheap, and not worth it. I was feeling sick, and felt I'd try this place I hadn't realized was there before (I wonder why...). I did order take out, so I can't say much about the service or the location itself. No hoisin sauce was included with the take out order. Strike one. I ordered extra meatballs in mine. I got 5 meatballs the size of what looked like a regular pho meatball cut into fourths. You can clearly see they're trying to keep the portion sizes minimal, which really irks me. Strike two. I asked for an order of vegetable egg rolls, I actually got rice paper vegetable spring rolls. Not the end of the world, and it saved me some calories, so there was a silver lining. I'll ignore that strike. But the feather that broke the camels back was the pound of fat that my roommates pho came with. He ordered brisket, and as I write this, he continues to pull massive chunks of fat from his mouth. A big strike three. There are several other little things I could nit pick on, but I digress. Save yourself the frustration, and walk the extra block to Pho Time. Yes, just one block away gets you a guaranteed good...