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| - I mean, the place isn't TOTAL garbage. But frankly, I've been to better pho places. Places where the meat portions aren't so skimpy in the pho soups, and the vegetables served are diverse and multi textured. Also, the broth needs to be abundant and not skimpy either.
That's the thing, this place may have decent pho broth, but the fact that they provide so little quantity in the bowl that arrives for the price makes me want to make the extra drive westward towards central Phoenix to hit up a better Pho place. Or head south to one of the plentiful pho places in Chandler.
Then there's the vegetables. See, Vietnamese food is about textures. And vegetables are a HUGE part of Vietnamese cuisine. For instance, in the pho that I order from here, the vegetable dish that you're supposed to dunk into the soup, it really just comes with bean sprouts and basil, the two cheapest vegetables that a restaurant can provision to its customers. What about cilantro? That's cheap, why can't there be a plentiful amount of that on the vegetable dish? What about the infamous "sawtooth herb" that more authentic Vietnamese restaurants will carry?
So, authenticity. That's a big one. And it's hard to talk about "authenticity" because let's face it, Vietnamese cuisine as we know it in the USA is very "southern Vietnam", which is really a collection of Vietnamese and French influence. American too, if the Vietnamese food is from Saigon (which was occupied by the US during the Vietnam war).
I bring up authenticity because this place really doesn't hammer it for me. It seems like they take all the cheapest parts of American-perceived Vietnamese cuisine and serve it to you. A great example is their noodle dishes that come with lettuce. The better restaurants will serve "green leaf lettuce" and not iceberg. Iceberg is cheap, lacks nutrition and frankly doesn't taste good. Also, the lack of mint in these dishes makes me scratch my head as to why the restaurant almost deliberately holds itself back.
The only thing I can possibly think of is that the restaurant is trying to cater to a specific demographic of customer that devalues things like green leaf lettuce, mint, sawtooth herb. I don't buy the idea that the restaurant doesn't have the financial resources to provision these basic herbs that can literally be bought walking distance from Mekong Market in the same shopping plaza.
To end the review on a positive note, I will say this: It may have been smart for the restaurant to hire on servers that speak fluent English, however, part of me wonders why there is a need for that in the 21st century. Since everyone has a smartphone or at least an Internet connection, even newcomers to Vietnamese food can quickly run a Google search to determine what Vietnamese food is all about, and know upon eating at Unphogettable that this restaurant really isn't the place for a true Pho experience.
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