Phở 88 Noodles & Grill — Restaurant in Washington

As someone who has grown up eating Vietnamese food my entire life, Pho 88 has the worst pho I've ever eaten.

I'm not from the D.C area, so I understand there are not a lot of pho places around here for you to be picky, but cmon people! That doesn't give you an excuse to serve me a tiny bowl with 4 pieces of tai and a handful of tripe calling it your "dat biet" and then charging me $12 for it. Anyways the portion of the food wasn't even the main problem. I think it was a lack of experience waitressing and witnessing the waitress confront a customer next to us not tipping that threw me off.

First off, I've been a waitress for 2 year and I cannot imagine the gall a waiter/waitress has to have to confront a customer about not tipping enough/ at all at the end of their meal. The couple next to us looked like they ate only 2 bowls of soup and 2 waters, but with 88's steep price , their bill must have been $24 minimum. The waitress, after the man of the couple paid, stopped him before he left and told him that it was "required (REQUIRED) to tip $4-5 minimum " this was happening a literal feet away from me and I was blown back. The man was Vietnamese and we Vietnamese usually like to leave tip on the table and leave, not having to bother with confronting nobody. He looked very surprised but complied anyways but I think out of spite he only tipped her $2 which thankfully the waitress took without any further argument , however it was obvious she wasn't happy with the FORCED tip.

As someone who has worked in the food service industry I understand the struggle of customers maybe not tipping 15% or even 10% most of the time, but you as a server should have no right to come and demand a tip.

That whole experience happened before our (my cousin and me) food came out. And I was extremely peeved which I had expressed to my cousin who also has been a waitress for 2 years and she felt the same.

This combined with as how my broth tasted like WATER 😭 I wasn't inclined to leave the best tip and my cousin agreed, the only good thing we tasted was the calamari and even then it was paired with a weird bbq sauce??

We left $2 maybe partly to imitate the man who got confronted next to us and because we felt because of their service and food it wasn't worth much more (our bill was 41 for two lunch phos, calamari and a boba) . The waitress took our bill away with the usual "thank you so much~" all us waitresses are inclined to do when you're done serving a customer but she didn't even wait until she was 4 ft away to start counting the tip 😂😂 . In the end I could hear her comment about how we only tipped $2 ("$2! They only tipped $2") and I think the only reason she didn't confront us was because she thought we didn't have money. Also proven by the whole time the waitresses were staring at us throughout the meal like we were gonna dine and dash.

Tdlr this...

I’m not one to write reviews but this place was the worst “Restaurant” I’ve ever been too, so I thought it would be best to share my experience and tell you NOT TO EVER GO/EAT HERE!! First of all the service was very poor. My friend and I ordered some boba tea to start and when we told our server we weren’t ready to place our food order we could tell they were annoyed that we hadn’t picked what to eat yet. And that’s not even the bad part… We ordered some dumplings and pho to share. As soon as we start dishing out out the pho my friend sees tiny bugs in our pho so we call our server over to address the issue. We showed our service evidence of the tiny bugs we found that we put out on a napkin and she wipes the bugs with her finger to get rid of them and then totally gaslights us into the thinking the bugs we found were salt and pepper!! And believe me it was not salt and pepper. Salt and pepper does have tiny legs! Our server does not offer to make the food again or apologize. Instead they bring out a spoon of salt and pepper to show us what it looks like! As this point my friend and I are apauled. They obviously didn’t want to fess up to their huge mistake and the way they went about the issue was just nasty. When the bill came they still charged use for the pho and didn’t say a word about the incident. Later we went online to look at the reviews and not to our suprise the same occurrence happened to multiple other people on separate occasions going back 6 years!! Some people even had whole roaches in there food. Its was unbelievable. I don’t know how this place is still in business. All I can say is don’t eat here and if you do and the same thing happens to you don’t let them gaslight you, but seriously DONT EAT HERE unless you like poor service and bugs...

MARCH 2025: Late check-in to the hotel found the hungry family in a precarious situation. My mother-in-law is Vietnamese and wanted to sample some authentic Vietnamese cuisine. Chinatown seemed to be the most apt solution.

We ordered 2 bowls of pho, 1 bowl of fried egg noodles, 2 orders of fresh garden rolls, 1 grilled pork rice platter, 1 order of flan, and 1 order of the spicy black bean spare ribs all for $115 before tips.

PROS: Food was delicious. They pho exceeded my family's expectations and had the authentic taste and ingredients. The pork platter did not. The service was speedy. The food arrived within 15 minutes. Restaurant ambiance was very eclectic reminding me of the streetfront restaurants near the University of Shanghai in China. I was impressed by how they managed such a challengingly narrow space feel so inviting.

CONS: I was slightly disappointed that the waitress was Chinese and not Vietnamese. I was expecting to practice my "Tiếng Việt" (Vietnamese language) and did not get the opportunity to do so. I must say that "Chinatown" is truly China town, and I was glad that they offered Vietnamese cuisine. We also noticed a few spelling errors with Vietnamese translation on the menu. "#7 pho rua cai" is supposed to be "#7 phở rau cải" or "vegetable phở with cabbage". The waitress' accent made her English a touch challenging to understand. There was a mixup with the order, but I accept responsibility for not clarifying what I really wanted. She repeated the order back to me, and I was too ashamed to ask her to repeat it a 3rd time. 🤫😅 My family was expecting homemade Fremch flan, but it was prepackaged.

SUMMARY: I would go...