I walk by this place every morning on the way to work and the curiosity was just eating away at me; Vietnamese burgers?? I have to try it!
It was difficult connecting the dots; how does one make pho, which is traditionally a noodle soup into a patty? Well, we shall see!
For under $8, I was presented a small pho burger with perhaps a 4-5 ounce patty? It was quite small to say the least but interesting none the less. The burger is served with the tiniest bowl of pho broth one can imagine (maybe twice the size of one of those containers you would use for hot sauce for takeout orders). The owner (a very nice guy) mentioned that I can use it as a dip for my burger; kinda like how some sandwich places where you dip your sandwich in the "au jus".
The burger was messy (though he did warn me beforehand). I have no issues with a messy burger granted you should be able to still enjoy most of the sauces and juices. But in this case, every single ounce of sauce(siracha, hoisin sauce) that was put on the burger ended up on my wrapper. I can see how this had happened; the pipping hot patty melts the sauce and all the moisture from the sauteed bean sprouts washed it all away from the burger. Hence, the patty ended up tasting quite dry and somehow the burger was still very mushy (I blame the bean sprouts). The beef however is pretty pronounced and you can tell it's freshly grounded.
So all in all, a very intriguing burger concept but the execution is quite lacking. Does it remind me of Pho? Yes it does, sorta. Is it good burger? There's a lot of work that needs to be done.