Shank & Bône — Restaurant in San Diego

When I ate lunch at Shank & Bone, the place was busy: lots of young people eager to get their pho on, a pair of heavy women with unflattering exposed mid-riffs, a couple of bearded douchebags wearing beanie hats while it's in the mid-70s outside, great big music pumping into the dining room, and enough hype in the air to make me squeal with glee.

Not a lot of Asian customers though.

Just sayin'.

I came here, of course, for the "Signature Pho S&B," an oft-seen photograph on my friends' photo feeds for the past year or so. It certainly has the look of a mean bowl of pho, with a large bone marrow shank protruding from the bowl. The marrow bone ensures that this bowl of soup has meat from just about every part of the cow: oxtail, round, brisket, flank, shank, and taì (rare beef).

For all of the fuss about how Shank & Bone supposedly uses "four times as many bones" to make their beef broth, I found that their pho tasted a bit light in flavor and texture. It didn't have that nice full body that one expects with broth that has extracted significant amounts of collagen from bones. Overall, the broth tasted middle-of-the-road for me. I realize that a "nuoc trong" pho base should be clean of fat, but having just enough left in the broth provides a subtle amount of necessary richness not present in Shank & Bone's pho. Doing this without crossing a threshold into the territory of "greasy" or "slick" is what separates the professionals from the amateurs.

The oxtail was difficult to work with, as it wasn't braised to the point where the meat was ready to come off easily when pulled with chop sticks. That's a mistake that a kitchen shouldn't be making on a bowl of soup they're charging $17 for. Other than that issue, the meats were alright. I did like that I could choose between thin and fat noodles. Fat noodles, for the win.

The "Bánh Xèo Tacos" are kinda whack, in that they're more like traditional bánh khot than they are tacos. In fact, that's pretty much exactly what they are, with pork, shrimp, some sprouts, and a mint sprig on top. Call them what you want, but Shank & Bone should give me some more vegetal accoutrements with these, starting with enough lettuce to actually wrap them.

I find this place to be about average. Ambitious, but average. San Diego has the 3rd largest population of Vietnamese-Americans in the U.S., so our options are plentiful. I have literally been to dozens of better pho destinations across the city, and some truly exceptional mom-and-pop places that produce a transcendent bowl of soup for less than half the cost of Shank & Bone. Unless you're more interested in looking for a photo to post to Instagram than eating good pho, are likely better off at one of those less...

We decided to stop by Shank & Bone for lunch on a Friday afternoon. Since it was a nice sunny day, my brother walked in to make a reservation for 7 of us to sit outside. When all of us arrived, we realized that the table was stainless steel top and it's super dazzle, so we asked one of the staff if we can sit inside with our registered service dog, and she said "YES, let's me prep the table for you guys". Once she has confirmed that our table is ready, she walked us into that outside table again (which we didn't want to be seated at & have already made the request to be seated inside). I then turned to one of the staff that was standing near by (Danny) and politely ask him if we could sit inside since we have made a request. Danny suddenly yelled at us "NO you can't, and don't lied to me about your service dog so that you can sit inside." He didn't even bother to ask if my service dog was trained to perform his task and just assumed that we lied to him about our service dog to be seated inside. Danny just walked away when I tried to confront him. He totally refused the rights of my service dog; my dog was behaving well, and was not posing a threat to the health and safety of others customers. I bring my service dog to all sort of places & restaurant and never get treated this way before. I totally understand that only service dogs are allowed to be inside the restaurant, and that's why we have made a request to switch our table to indoor. We would not bother to request to be seated inside if our dog was not a service dog. With that being said, just how rude Danny treated us, and turned to find out that he's the manager of the restaurant, I definitely won't come back to the restaurant again and will not recommend to any of my friends and family. We enjoyed the food but not accepting nor recommending this extremely poor customer service. I hope the owner will take this...

Decided to give this place a try as I’m not from the area but was craving some Vietnamese food. I had high hopes for this restaurant after seeing the glowing reviews about the food. We drove to the area and saw how busy it was so we decided to just call for a takeout order and get the staff’s recommendations on some Vietnamese staples. My wife loves Bún bò Huế so I asked the staff if they have it. The restaurant was loud so they probably couldn’t hear correctly and thought I asked for a “Bun Bowl”. It’s easy to mix these two things up, I can understand that. It was only after picking up my order and going to our hotel that I realized the order was not what we were expecting. I called the restaurant to notify them of the mix up, and the staff said that they would inform the owner/management about it and see how they could resolve it.

I get a call at 10:45 PM from presumably management who then proceeded to belittle me by asking sarcastically, “you do have internet, don’t you?” In regards to me not knowing Bún bò Huế was not on the menu. I’ve had order mix ups in the past, some were refunded, some came with apologies, some came with offers of an alternate dish. But this was the first time that I was met with such a rude response. She then proceeded to give blanket statements about “oh this is a difficult issue” and “I can’t be sure who said what so I can’t do anything”… so now you’re saying I’m lying to get a free meal?

At that point, I was so taken aback by the amount of disrespect, I couldn’t stomach discussing the issue any further and just left it at that. The floor staff is incredibly nice and super understanding and apologetic, which I appreciated. The management on the other hand was the polar opposite. Cold, sarcastic, belittling. Very disappointed this was how the...