| Overall (based on 2 ratings) |  |
| Broth (flavor, fragrance, clarity) |  |
| Noodles (texture, clumpiness) | |
| Meat (tenderness, quality) |  |
| Vegetables (variety, freshness) | |
C. Nguyen
Location is easy to access along a major thoroughfare but not too many parking spots up front. Place seems to be a converted seafood place with traces of the old decors on the wall. There is some lingering funk that can interfere with your dining experience. Service is curt but efficient. I tried the XL bowl and as well as getting a takeout for vermicelli noodle combo. The pho came out quick enough but lack the initial piping hot steaming facial. The broth was light, disappointingly so. I can barely detect any beef flavor and even lean toward a weak chicken flavor. I did something I have almost never done on a pho bowl, add some fish sauce to make it palatable. The noodle would have fared better on a steaming hot broth bath but alas languished limp and lifeless in the tepid water. The meat was standard fare mix that would have scored better at other places but could not pull this bowl out of mediocrity. Same with the valiant veggies that enlisted the oft forgotten coriender ngo gai and must have Vietnamese basil. Hard to believe the flagship product failed to entice me past the trial tastings. Very disappointing. On a lighter note, the vermicelli dish with the various bbq samples was above par in many respect. Very puzzling why such care was lacking in the namesake entree. Weird but I would recommend to shy away from getting pho at this place, but ... it would be worth your while to partake on the other menu choices that more than hold their own.
C. Nguyen
At first I was excited to find a pho place closer to the hotel I was at in Revere then I arrived ... Place looked half finished from the conversion from the previous restaurant incarnation, I'm guessing a seafood place with the nautical motif. Half the light banks were off on one side of the restaurant making the small dining area feel more cramped than normal. Service came reasonably fast but the rest was downhill from there. Broth was so so hot, looked clear of the fat globules, yet obviously lacking in beef flavor. It almost lean toward the chicken broth flavor in pho ga. The noodle suffered in the lukewarm bath and never got to the al dente state. The meat followed suite losing most of to the off broth with only a couple components offering any hint of beef. Last but not least, the veggies could not get blanched properly when I dunk them and remained "raw" for all intent and purposes. Considering this is a pho place, this was way of the mark.
