Pho Today — Restaurant in South Plainfield

tl;dr Below average Vietnamese food. Management scapegoats kitchen staff when they mess up to avoid taking blame. Not coming back.

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The Food

To preface this review, I have a peanut allergy and in the months before my family talked to the management and indicated this to them. We had a 60ish person party in the banquet hall and ordered a bunch of dishes buffet style. I also got some extra food because they put peanuts in one of the dishes. Here are the dishes that I tried.

Grilled Chicken The chicken was overly sweet and not charred enough. Not very tasty.

Seafood Soup This was pretty good.

Crispy Seafood Noodles Decent, but since it was served buffet style, the noodles got soggy very quickly. Would've preferred the noodles and sauce be served separately.

Shrimp Spring Roll The wrapper was very thick and resembled a Chinese spring roll rather than a Vietnamese one. The filling was very dense and lacked a shrimpy flavor. Pretty subpar overall.

Crispy Fried Tofu The tofu was crispy but lacked any sort of flavor. Not good but not awful if you mix it with something else.

Shrimp and Pork Lotus Salad Actually pretty good, but since I have a peanut allergy I got sick.

Rice Platter with Grilled Pork (Single Order) The pork was dry and had no char. Pretty much ruins the whole dish. It was bad.

Claypot Salmon (Single Order) Above average. Juicy salmon and seasoned well.

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The Management

As I mentioned above, the Shrimp and Pork Lotus Salad had peanuts in it. Thankfully, I'm not anaphylactic so I only got a stomachache.

We never told them that I WASN'T anaphylactic. You'd think they would be more careful since it can literally be a life or death situation. Naturally, I went to have a word with the management—a brother and sister duo.

We talked to the sister. I told her that something probably has peanuts in it or was contaminated. I thought the culprits were either the Grilled Chicken or the Seafood Noodles. To be fair to her, she knew that neither of those things could have peanuts, since when they use peanuts, they only sprinkle them on at the end (and that dish isn't supposed to have it). However, when we told her that I had an allergic reaction, she condescendingly implied that I must be allergic to something else and that "if the chicken makes you itchy maybe you shouldn't eat it" (sage advice tbh).

After this we found the peanuts at the bottom of the Shrimp and Pork Salad tray and showed it to the management. After talking to their kitchen staff for a while both the brother and sister duo came to talk to us.

They informed me that the chef who made the salad was on autopilot and put some peanuts in the salad by accident before she realized her mistake and took them out by hand, instead of tossing the batch. Afterwards the brother assured me that they lectured her on the severity of allergies and what the proper protocol is. They also informed me that she's been working there for years. Then they brought her out to apologize to me directly.

Huge red flags here.

If the chef has been here for YEARS and just now understood the severity of allergies how have they not run into a problem before (where you'd assumed they know about this now)?

What kind of spineless management throws their kitchen staff under the bus like that? Ultimately if your kitchen staff doesn't understand that allergies can kill people that's on you since you hired them and you set the rules.

While I'm sure the chef genuinely felt bad about the situation, the management ends up looking really sketchy when they tell you how long the chef has been working there before bringing her out to apologize. To me that reads like they're trying to scapegoat her but also trying to make us feel bad for getting mad at them because the chef might be fired (which I told them explicitly I didn't want).

Their takeaway from this? The management told my mother they would NEVER TAKE ON A PARTY WITH FOOD ALLERGIES AGAIN. Unreal.

So yeah. Not coming...

A group of 4 of us went here and ordered 4 bowls of pho, spring rolls, and autumn rolls. We came here for the soup because we know how satisfying a bowl of pho can be. Unfortunately for us none of us finished our bowls:

1. the broth: the broth was “weak” too light and not savory enough. We would have liked a better seasoned broth with more salty, coriander, and anise notes and an overall deeper beef (umami) flavor. Once we slurped both noodles and broth there was basically no flavor. The vegetable broth was practically water. The salt levels need to be right on the spot for the soup to be flavorful with the other ingredients, they did not compensate for this. I got a a mixed bowl with beef tendon, slow-cooked brisket, filet mignon, tripe, meatball. Nothing special here, also the brisket was exceptionally chewy. While chewy textures are valued in much of South East Asia, slow cooked brisket should not be this tough, especially when sliced so thinly.

2. the noodles: thin rice noodles where over cooked upon arrival. They likely precook/soak pounds of noodles and just add them to piping hot broth, these were over cooked, and breaking apart before we got half way through our bowls.

3. the garnishes: Garnishes seemed pretty fresh we would have liked more basil and possibly the addition of a little cilantro. It also did not seem that any onions or scallions were present, a cost cutting measure perhaps.

4. the Appetizers: the spring rolls were ok, nothing special, crunchy, salty, filling a little dry. The dipping sauces were mediocre the peanut sauce was too sweet and felt like it came from a giant 3 gallon tank, it could use more spice and acidity. The garlic water was ok but again it did not enhance the dish. Iceberg lettuce was quartered and did not make for a convenient wrapping for the spring rolls. The autumn rolls where decent, however there were basically no fresh herbs, and once again iceberg lettuce stuffed in there simply diluted the taste.

I would not come back to such a place for the most important reason, the Pho broth felt diluted and under seasoned. This huge restaurant is like a giant cafeteria with servers who quickly pick up the premade/assembled foods. Though you are served fast, it’s unfortunate, however, that the food just has a conventional feel. One goes for pho because they know how much time a good beef broth takes to make at home. This broth could have been made at home using beef bouillon and some vegetable stock (and probably better I may add).

The service: I couldn’t say the service was great. Our server forgot the one tea order we put in, everything was just very fast.

One would like to see a place like this succeed, but ultimately if one is served a bland broth, for whatever reason, it’s simply not...

First word that comes to mind is "authentic". As someone who has lived in Asia and spent a lot of time in Saigon, among other places, I have a hard time finding decent Vietnamese food in the NY area, including Flushing and especially out on Long Island. Plenty of options, but none of them is authentic.

This place is the real deal. Like, if I lived in Manhattan, I would skip all the pretender pho places in NJ across the Hudson (including the much smaller Pho Today in Fort Lee near the GWB) and head straight here, the Pho Today main branch. It's the real deal and totally worth it!

The critically important pho broth is brewed at least 8 hours as required. From the first sip, it's so obviously not made from powder - but from actual raw ingredients, in exactly the right proportions. The brisket is perfect texture, as is the tendon. You can heap on as much Thai basil, cilantro, bean sprouts, etc. as you wish. The grilled marinated pork over rice (you can of course also get it served over thin rice noodles) is absurdly good. The Vietnamese coffee (with condensed milk) is the perfect mix of tart and sweet - as good as you get in Saigon. Their smoothies are so incredibly smooth (and missing the little chunks of ice that other smoothie shops serve up), you won't believe it's not soft-serve ice cream (it's not). Order the avocado smoothie, and get it without boba - overkill and unnecessary for something so delicious. [Note to Pho Today: your online menu on all the delivery sites doesn't have a "no boba" option when ordering smoothies, so customers like me always need to call it in - not easy when your phone lines are busy with people calling at lunchtime. Maybe add "no boba" as an option?]

Lastly, shout-out to Maya who was manager on-duty when I last visited (probably my 7th or 8th visit). Maya realized I might know what I'm talking about and suggested I submit a review. After a little bit of prodding, she promised to convince Pho Today management to open up a Long Island branch if I posted a review. Okay, Maya, I did my part. When are you all coming to Long Island? Trust me,...