Pho Tan

First time returning since the COVID restrictions started in March 2020. Thinking pho was a perfect lunch as it was a cold rainy day.

Opted for #14 again, sliced rare beef with rice noodle soup. The large has increased in price from $10 to $13, which is understandable given the increase in food costs. There was no issue with the service as there was only one other patron in the establishment at the time I was there.

The presentation was fine but the taste was just not there. The broth was quite bland, there was a visible layer of oil on the surface and the portion size of beef in the soup was very minimal.

I will return at some point to see if this was an anomaly or this is the new norm...hoping not the latter

This was my first time here, I originally wanted to get a bowl of pho on a rainy day but I decided to try something new. I chose Banh Uot which was rice rolls ($7) on the Appertizer menu.

The rice rolls were quite thick and mushy almost. I definitely not recommend to try this dish here as you can find other spots in town selling cheap and delicious Vietnamese Rice rolls.

Having said that, I will come back and try their pho and other dishes.

(Migrating old reviews from my account on another review site to here)

Tried the dry egg noodles for the first time and I quite liked it. It came with seafood (shrimp, squid, and faux crab sticks), and had sweet soy sauce drizzled on it. I also added a good helping of chilli oil! Pretty good.
There's also a side of soup and that was tasty.

I was really craving Vietnamese food and it's one of the only foods I feel I can't recreate for myself at home! So I ordered a lot of food from Pho Tan and possibly went overboard with how much I thought I could eat but I was really happy with it! I love the spring rolls so I got multiple orders of them and they were amazing as usual and tasted pretty good when I had them for breakfast the next day as well lol. The lemon grass chicken with a fried egg was also great and was a huge portion, I ate half for dinner and the other half for lunch the next day. Finally the banh mi, was really good although I wish it had a few more jalapeños in it! Overall, the food is great and comes in huge portions for the price. In terms of pick up the host didn't really seem to get the whole social distancing thing and wasn't wearing a mask or gloves which was a bit worrying.

My first visit here was supreme. I wanted to sing praises for the food here. I've been back a few times more and it's been good. Simple decent service. Order and eat and pay at the counter. But one day nocked it down a bit for me. I understand, some days are not so good. Some days maybe I'm overly attentive to details when I shouldn't. People have good days and bad. Still I if it's Pho I want, I will come here if I can. That's Pho Tan.

Stopped by this pho place for lunch. Good selection of appetizers, pho soups, rice dishes and vermicelli. We ordered rice roll appetizer, chicken pho, spicy pork pho, special pho, beef vermicelli, spring roll, salad roll. The food is as expected for Vietnamese joint. Not overly salty. It's an older building but renovated. Service was fast and friendly. Good for families. Nice place to stop by for a quick lunch.

This review is for the now closed BURNABY location but since it is a chain (kind of) I thought it would be alright to post. Ordered chicken banh mi, dry egg noodle, pork chop rice dish and stuffed chicken wings. Food was moderately priced but also mediocre tasting with nothing special about it. The noodles were a bit salty and the chicken wings were quite dry but other than that, it was average vietnamese food and being as it was empty when i went, I'm not too surprised it is now closed.

Food Review: For dinner we decided to try Pho Tan near Victoria. Their hours are amazing, very convenient. The portions were great for the pricing, very economical, no arguments. Did the food taste good? Oh yes. Would I recommend it? Probably not, only because we have been so blessed with amazing authentic Vietnamese food in Vancouver. We really wanted to try @comvietnamese, but unfortunately couldn't reach it in time before closing . Overall, I'd say its medicore. The salad roll ratios weren't ideal, with a lot less shrimp then we are custom to. Overall, if I was hungry, I would go. If I had options, probably not.

I don't normally wake up early on a week day morning to post on yelp. However due to last night's awful experience at Pho Tan with the owner, I had to post and let other's know what happened. If you scroll down to "Stargaryen C.'s" post you'll see that someone else had also seen the true, miserable colors of the owner of Pho Tan.

This was a place that was close by and we both really wanted to have their fresh coconut drink. Came in on a Thursday evening just before 6 pm, so the restaurant was relatively empty (probably 3/4 tables at most). We were crankily acknowledged by the sour-faced Cantonese owner who spoke to us in a brash, IDGAF-that-you're-here kinda tone by saying "you can sit here (which was in an awkward spot next to a family of 4) or have to share a table" when the restaurant was so empty. I was taken back at how rude he spoke to his staff. There is no reason why you need to shout/bark orders. The servers were pretty nice; however a bit clueless (our tea was literally hot water and I had to kindly ask them to give us tea). Today's tea was a liquid form of chrysanthemum (no tea leaves, which isn't a big deal as it's a common practice, and obviously a money saver).

Food: Since it was my first time here, I wanted to try a couple of things to get an idea how good their food was. Chicken Banh Mi which was ok. Super chintzy with the chicken, pickling, and needed more sauce. I had to add a bit of chili satay and even fish sauce-which I never ever do but it was too dry for my liking). The best part was that the bread was soft.
Spring rolls were decent. They were made with rice paper (which is the legit Vietnamese way) and were crispy. There was a slightly odd taste, which I suspect was due to either the type of rice paper or the rice paper was expired. It's worth trying (hopefully you don't taste that odd flavor).

Ordered the broken rice dish with beef spareribs. The beef was marinated well, so I appreciated the flavor. Don't advertise broken rice if you can't deliver. My friend was like "how is this different from regular rice?" I said there was no difference because there was no broken rice. But I didn't care that much because at least the flavors were there. Typically when you order a rice dish at a Vietnamese restaurant, you are given a small side order of broth. They even gave me a soup spoon (in addition to a large metal spoon, steak knife, and fork) which is for the broth. When I questioned the server if the dish came with the soup broth, she looked confused and said no. I am pretty sure it was supposed to come with soup, but at this point we had ordered a decent amount of food and I wasn't interested in engaging with the owner, who was greeting his Chinese customers in a more friendly manner and were seating walk-in customers to tables that were for some reason, not offered to us.

We also order #83 which was a combo platter of vermicelli noodles, sugar cane prawn, salad roll, salad, and grilled chicken (it also included pork, but we asked to make it all chicken). The Salad roll was nothing special (too much noodle, it's a common tactic to make it look big, but it's just a filler). The chicken and sugar cane prawns were fine.

So overall, their food isn't bad. However, this place deserves 1 star because the owner and I had a heated conversation over his attitude over the bill. I looked at the bill and noticed a charge that wasn't correct. He had charged us $11 for the 2 coconut drinks, when on the menu it was priced at $4.25. So our bill should have read $8.50 for the two drinks. I politely pointed out this error and then he flipped! He started yelling saying "That isn't the price, we charge everyone more now, prices go up, costs go up!" Hey, I get it, prices go up due to inflation; however there was no need for him to freak out and yell at me. I was merely pointing out that his menu prices were different and that if he was going to increase the price, then he should make changes to his menu. It's false advertising. Well he clearly did not like my suggestion and started saying "Everyone pays this price!" and I kept on saying "I get that, but you really should change your menu prices" and he said "I don't care, you go to other places, you will not find these prices". Actually you can. If you're looking for cheaper places, without the attitude of a man-child, then message me on yelp for personal recommendations. He then went on to rant saying "fine, you don't wanna pay, then don't". I should have walked out that door and taken his offer. However, I just told him "If you're really the owner, you shouldn't talk to people so rudely, you should also care more about your customers....since we arrived you weren't very nice to us and your employees." Not surprisingly the angry man-child shouted "I don't care!" If only I captured our exchange on video. I have no need to support this disgusting owner. There are plenty of other decent Vietnamese restaurants in this city.

If I could give zero stars I would've. When we came in the restaurant there was only 2 other parties. My table was dirty when my server bought us to the table she flicked something off the table but I didn't say anything, then I observed the table there was a noodle on the table (we didn't get our food yet) the table had some stains on it so I just took my own wipes to wipe it off. Then I ordered salad rolls (this was for two people) I asked very politely for an extra sauce bowl not more sauce (he was mumbling and gave me a glare I found that really rude) my friend ordered pho but they didn't give him the bean sprout dish we had to ask (at this point we were the only customer in store) I ordered a rice dish they did not give me my utensils or the fish sauce I had to also asked for these items. Anyways then we paid and went to the car they put taped a note on our car "customer parking you will be towed" something like that. Then he came out and said I saw you walk around. Yes we walked around the building to the front in total we were there for probably 30 minutes! What a piece of sh!t. Like hello we were customers. He wouldn't apologize kept saying it was ok. No its not ok, I will not be coming back here and I advise everyone else to do the same.