Good stuff @joonjoon
Nice report…I’ll give this a go soon.
Thanks Joonie. I think I’ll wait for more feedback (though your observations were extremely thorough) before dropping any money here (not that I can’t afford pissing away a twenty. I just don’t like to do so on food when I should know better).
I do like that the soup was piping hot and the peppers were searing as well.
No excuse though, on the condition of the noodles and the bean sprouts.
Which is why I will wait. Thanks again.
Thanks KB. Just to clarify, the bean sprouts were good!
So I’ve been back here twice since my original visit. The first time was just for a Banh Mi. It was ok. Too much bread for the amount of filling for me.
Second time I went with a few other people and tried some more things.
Fried rolls. 2 for 4 bucks. Not great. Not horrble. Pho Le’s version is outstanding and this version is really a disappointment in comparison.
Fish sauce wings. It was ok. Maybe I’m being nice. My friend (who doesn’t mince words) said it was shit.
My friend got a Bun Cha (noodles with stuff) - he really didn’t like it. Primarily because the meat had too much fat on it. I like fat on meat so I might have liked it but I didn’t try any. Again, the Super Bowl at Pho Le is fantastic in comparison. This one just didn’t look that great.
Combination Pho. Much better this time. More meat. Apparently it comes with oxtail which they didn’t give me the first time which is very nice. The oxtail comes in a separate bowl with soup! With the addition of oxtail, I will now proclaim this bowl of pho worth the money.
Broth was much darker and had a lot more flavor than the first time. My friend got a pho also and she wasn’t particularly impressed. Their pho comes out piping hot (which I love) but she was disappointed because her raw beef was completely cooked. Always get the raw beef on the side!
They gave us WAY too little veggies for 2 servings of Pho. I mean it was barely enough for 1.
Service is still atrocious and some of the wait staff speak no English which resulted in the following hilarity:
“Excuse me, can I get some extra hot peppers please?”
“???”
“You know, hot pepper? jalapeno?”
“Ok, how many?”
“I don’t know, maybe like, 2 or 3?”
“…” (Puzzled look on waiter’s face) “Ok”
Couple minutes later, waiter returns with a can of Dr. Pepper.
“No no…not Dr. Pepper, chili pepper! Like for the soup?” (pointing at pho)
“…ok”
Couple minutes later, waiter returns with a little dish…of black pepper.
“No no…hot pepper, jalapeno?”
“…we don’t have that.”
“What? You don’t have hot pepper?”
My friend fishes through her bowl of pho and finds a slice of jalapeno. “Like this?”
“Ohh!! ok”
Couple minutes later, I finally got my pepper. Frustrating, but I gotta say, it was the funniest thing that’s happened to me in a restaurant in a while.
Oh, and no culantro with the pho this time.
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Good to hear it’s a little better. Have you ever tried the Google translate app? You can speak a sentence or two into it and it will speak back the translation.
Hmm, I put in doggy and all I get back is Mi Fuc Bac.
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I put the same thing in and got “me love you long time”
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No cilantro? Was there fresh basil? Lime? Bean sprouts?
We got the usual basil lime and sprouts. Cilantro came in the soup but it was missing cUlantro, which they had the first time I went.
OOOOOOOOh. Thx for the clarification!
I have been here twice now. First time the Pho was kind of weak. Second visit I had Combo Pho and it was chock full of ingredients. I give it a thumbs up. I guess the oxtail was served in its own bowl because some diners are freaked out by its appearance. We also had house special banh mi, $5.50 for a large stuffed sandwich is a good value. It may have been lacking the radishes. But good none the less. I prefer the 99 location and parking over Pho Le which is a big plus for a quick lunch.
I have to comment that my Pho at Pho Le last evening was extremely skimpy with the jalopena peppers as well (I found myself breaking off the 3 slices I had into littler pieces for a better distribution. I was also going to cite the Thai Basil, but what little I got, infused the broth nicely. No cilantro which I thought strange too.
I’ve never seen cilantro included in the veggie dish anywhere. Usually there are some chopped into the soup when it comes out…
Usually there are some chopped into the soup when it comes out…
That’s what I meant jj. definitely in the broth
I’ve been here a couple more times and I really enjoy it now. To start, it’s enormous. It’s pretty rare that I can’t take down a bowl of pho but this one… wow, it’s a lot. Worth the money.
I proclaim this Pho the gnarliest in NJ. I mean that in a good way, but it might not be for everyone. What makes it gnarly? Two things: It’s got tons of random bits and their meat is not trimmed much and has tons of connective tissue in it. There’s some times stuff in there you literally cannot chew through. Most people seem to hate this kind of thing but I personally love it.
Two other things I love about this pho: It comes out HOT. It will be warm until you’re done with it. Also, the temperature is perfect for getting the rare beef on the side and having it like shabu shabu - I dip the meat in the broth for a minute and it’s a perfect pink. But the heat of the bowl means you MUST get the rare beef on the side.
Finally, the veggies never come out swimming in water. Love it. The broth is a pretty generic pho broth now, slightly on the aggressive side, and they’ve packed it with MSG. You keep tasting this thing in your mouth an hour after you’ve eaten it. I personally think they can dial back the MSG a little but that’s probably what people like.
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What to do on a rainy and miserable Monday of Memorial Day weekend? Go for Pho !!! Now for those of you who know anything about me, this is NOT my thing. I have very little Pho-cking experience with Pho, so you know - Pho Sho- not to hold too much in my opinion of my experience.
For a holiday Monday afternoon it was rather busy, at least 10 tables in the place half of which were white and the other half yellow. (is this a politically correct assessment of my fellow diners? Hey I’m just using the pho-cking lingo my man @joonjoon used to describe the crowd!!!) It’s always my impression the more members of a specific ethnic community you find at an ethnic restaurant is a good sign, they know the good stuff and they know where to get it. Also as joon had noted the service was, well, how to put this? It was slo-pho-sho. Only one waiter who seemed like the owners son who had to work the Holiday shift. “Fine you can make me work but you can’t make me enjoy it” as he shuffled around the dining room in his un-rushed pace. 10+ tables would be a handful for the most energetic and motivated servers, qualities that were completely missing from this young man. Even with that said, he got to us and our order in a fairly timely manner, which was a welcome surprise as other tables were visibly and vocally disturbed by his lack of “hustle”.
Not knowing what I was really reading on the menu I decided to go with the combo Pho with a little of everything in it, including ox tail. My wife got a chicken dish, and she also ordered some beef appetizer. Everything was served at once, and again it was rather timely, no complaints about the service we were lucky. Ok, well as my picture shows it’s a big bowl of soup, with a ton of noodles and thinly sliced cuts of various meats. The oxtail is served in a separate bowl (see picture). Thank God there was a table of yellow next to us, so I was able to spy and check out their Pho feeding skills. I noticed it seems pretty standard to work your chop sticks in your dominant hand (right) and the soup spoon in your other. You do a combo of snaring some noodles with the chop sticks then immediately wash it down with the soup. I actually got into a pretty good rhythm until I saw what became the game changer, I noticed the man next to me had taken the dipping plates on the table, added some sauce to it, then would pick and dip his meat into the sauce, eat / chew and wash down with broth!! Oh yeah baby enter the sriracha !! Now we’re talking!!!
(now what is the proper noodle/soup/pho etiquette with the long noodles? Is it slurping them up or bite and cut?..I did one good slurp then whatever I couldn’t get in got bitten off, no excessive slurping for this white)
So here’s the story, the Pho itself was very good but had a heavy seasoning I could have done with less of. I’m not even 100% sure what he herb/seasoning was but it had a very strong finish, so much so it really took away from the beef flavor I was looking for and expecting. I will tell you though this is a sign of a fresh broth and fresh seasoning instead of water and beef bullion broth, but ideally if they could have cut the seasoning back a bit I would have liked the flavor much more.
I saved my oxtail for last and after several failed attempts to wrangle that up with my chop sticks skills, I just had to go all white boy and pick the dam thing up with my fingers to gnaw on it. All the meat, even the thin sliced in the soup is fatty, but not chewy fatty because it’s been boiled. The oxtail had a fair amount of fat too but it was enjoyable none the less.
While my wife enjoyed her dish, the fatty chicken thighs used in it eventual got to her and she left a decent portion of chicken behind. Both her rice and my noodles were very good, as was the spring roll that came with her meal.
So to be perfectly honest I really only tried this place because of all the hype that surrounded it’s very delayed opening and reading about it here. Since it was a bit of a cold dreary day I thought some pho/soup would be a good meal and it was. Will I rush to go back? No, but if someone wanted me to meet them there I certainly would go back anytime. Oh, also I’m apparently a very sloppy pho eater, I was rather embarrassed by the mess I had made after the waiter removed my plate from the table. Do not ever invite me over for pho if you are using your good linens.
The place is very nice inside, very clean and well decorated. If Pho is Yo thing, the give this Pho a try Pho-Sho.
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Glad you didn’t hate it, @NotJrvedivici 
I still need to get there although I’m more interested in getting to the ramen place in Long Branch right now.
I’ve never seen the meat served separately IN BROTH w pho… Usually it’s just on a plate because it cooks almost immediately–or are those your individual bowls? If not, it sounds like the Tseukemen style of ramen (if I spelled that right)… We need @joonjoon to chime in!!
The main (large) bowl is my pho combination with all the noodles and sliced meat mixed in. The small bowl closest to my large bowl is just my oxtail and meat balls in a separate broth. (I forgot the meatballs were in there and while tasty their consistency was a bit off). Above my oxtail/meatball bowl was the beef appetizer my wife had ordered, which was just really more of the same. Also the greenery you can see above my pho are the fresh sprouts, sliced jalapeno’s and basil they served on the side.
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Ramen noodles are wheat based and Chinese in origin. Noodles found in Pho are usually rice vermicelli and can be very thin (bun) or flat (banh pho) like linguine.
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Knew that, but it wasn’t until today that I read about the Tsukemen style of ramen, where the broth is served plain and all of the other ingredients are ‘dry’ on a plate on the side!
@NotJrvedivici all of those ‘garnishes’ are standard w pho…and TG you were watching the folks around you!!
