4.5 stars.
This amazing gem of a Vietnamese restaurant can be found hiding behind First Markham Place.
It appears to be a family run restaurant.
Now I had decided to wait on my review. I thought I'd go a few times before confirming that this has quickly become my favourite pho restaurant in York region.
You walk in and you find a nice clean and nice sized space. The aromas of traditional pho and other Vietnamese dishes start to fill your lungs.
They have your traditional dishes, some bun and of course pho. What I enjoy is the build your own pho. You choose your soup base and you can have your pick of meats. Actually you can add all the meats and your choice of fresh or dry rice noodles with no extra charge. We've tried the regular beef broth and the tom yum gong soup ($1 extra) and both were amazingly flavourful. I had recently tried another new pho restaurant with the same order, tom yum gong soup with raw beef and dry rice noodles and The Pho restaurant takes the cake. It's spicy and sour but you can taste all the herbs and layers of spiciness within it. The beef broth is full bodied and beefy, especially when you add the raw beef slices. The beef slices are fresh and the marbled type so you don't get the tough meat. The beef balls are the traditional small beef balls, but don't judge them by their size. They're amazingly bouncy and very yummy.
If you want extra meat (double the portions) that's only $2. The Vietnamese pork sausages and basil leaf beef rolls are absolutely amazing. The flavours are fresh and multi layered.
The service is always friendly and fixed with a smile. Price wise, it's about the average $8.95 for a regular and $9.95 for the large/extra large. The portions are fairly generous but I've found it slightly inconsistent. Where one night there were more noodles and less on another day. That's the only place they lost a few points, fix that up and it's a 5 star place in my books.
Will I be back? Yup and many more times too.