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| - Cute surroundings and atmosphere, well draped in hipster design and high end cocktails, hide the home of the worst pho I have ever had.
We hit up Rice Paper based on a late night craving for pho, and not really knowing the area we had just moved into, we pulled up the Yelp and saw the reviews. We should have walked away when we saw the prices for pho (anything over $7 is a dead giveaway that your in a faux-pho situation), but we were hungry, had literally just moved into a new apartment, and didn't want to keep searching.
One would think that moving hunger makes all food taste that much better. And it does! Which makes the pho I had that much worse. The broth was bland, the noodles haphazardly balled up at the bottom of the bowl, and the umami bomb that I expect from really rich, beautiful pho, was instead a tepid, flaccid cousin of Top Ramen. I take that back. Top Ramen puts this pho to shame. (Is it okay to compare instant Maruchan and pho? Yeah, in this case, I think it's the only fair comparison.)
Being from Seattle, I get that my pho standards are a little high. But dang, at least send your chef out to a real Vietnamese restaurant to get an understanding of what broth should taste like (there are about 6-10 solid pho restaurants in every major hood in Seattle, well worth the trip).
So why 2 stars? Service was decent (my wife had a nasty hair in her pho and it was comped- that wouldn't happen in a pho joint), and the decor was great. But really, that should have been the first warning- no great pho ever came from a gilded cage.
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