Pho So 1

After moving away from Vegas, we came back to see Adele. But one of the places I had to stop by and get pho from one of my old favorite spots at Pho So 1 again. So disappointing.

The broth this time was so bland, it was like just water. It wasn't even warm, my rare steak (tai) didn't even cook, and was pink even after leaving it near the bottom. I guess the quality must have dropped

Located in Chinatown. The sign is pretty big, you won't miss it.

I ordered the CHARBROILED PORK, SHREDDED PORK SKIN AND EGG LOAF WITH BROKEN RICE. There were a few pork slices that were all fat, but besides that, the pork was tasty. The shredded pork skin and egg loaf were also really good. The best friend ordered the BUN BO HUE and she really enjoyed it. If you want to try the VIETNAMESE COFFEE WITH CONDENSED MILK, it's very sweet so be warned.

It's a solid pho place. Food came out fast, service was good, nothing to complain!

I actually dined at Pho So 1 during my recent Yelp! sabbatical. I have been going to the SF Asian Market for the past few years on a near weekly basis and never realized that Pho So 1 is located in the same shopping center! After hearing so many good things bout this place, I decided to check it out one day.

This is a definite one and done for me.

a) the place is NOT clean at all. The seats and tables looked like they could use a good cleaning. I kind of winced as I went to sit in the booth. When I went to look at the menu, a dried piece of lettuce was stuck to one corner and fell off onto the table as I noticed it.

Nice.

This was my first impression of this place.

b) Ordered a plate of roasted chicken with rice and salad. The chicken was very dry and tasted bland. Wildly unimpressed. The rice and salad was serviceable, but it's pretty tough to screw those up.

c) Ordered a bowl of Pho..and while it wasn't terrible, it also wasn't anything special. I can name a dozen places off the top of my head where I can get better, more satisfying pho in this city.


Service was okay. Just okay.

I just don't get what all the hype over this place is about. No thanks.

2 stars.

Meh.

This is a long overdue review. I've been here so many times but never left a review, so this is gonna be a super looooong novel.

We usually come here once a week or every other week and order a giant bowl of pho (pho Xe Lua meaning pho with an XL size) and a regular pho.

We like the broth. My husband hated pho because of the first bad experience, but he really likes it here. I don't like the noodles that they have so I substitute it with the flat rice noodles, which is more similar to what we actually use in pho in Vietnam.

Service is just okay or even less than average. They drop your water and your food and never come back. They might be back and ask if things are okay, if we get lucky. Sometimes service is bad, today is an example. The giant bowl looks pathetic, feeling like they just put the same portion of a regular bowl into an XL bowl and pour a lot of broth in it. It's just not even close to the amount we usually get. When I asked the manager/supervisor about it, good thing I speak Vietnamese, we argued back and forth and eventually he said it did look less than normal and gave us more noodles, not meat though.

The charbroiled pork noodles (#47 and #48) are good too. Sometimes the sauce is a little salty as they put too much fish sauce in it and I don't like fish sauce that much.

Another good dish is #80, grilled marinated beef wrapped in lettuce with noodles. The only thing is that you have to grill it and wrap it yourself at the table. But it's very good and is really a popular dish here.

#91 the grilled pork meatball is a little sweet and dry for my taste. I enjoyed the first few bites, but eventually tired of the dryness.

#63, Bun bo Hue is very flavorful. If you don't like pork blood like me, you can ask to substitute it with more beef.

#95 is just ehhh. It's bland. I wouldn't recommend getting this at all, unless you pour a bowl of fish sauce on it to make it more salty.

Overall, food gets 4 stars, service is 2.5 stars. In total, 3 stars.

My friends were yearning for Pho, and so was I. He said this place was the best and always comes here whenever he visited Las Vegas. But wait, this place isn't even the highest rated Pho place on Yelp! Hmm, lets see...

I ordered the #10, which was Pho with pretty much everything: rare steak, brisket, tendon, tripe, and flank, and also ordered an Iced French Filtered Coffee with condensed milk.

First things first, I have to taste the broth, and it was good. It had a nice clean taste, but it lacked the fragrance probably due to the lack of spices and herbs. I enjoyed all the meat, especially the tendon as they were big slices rather than small bite-size pieces I'm used to. The brisket was tender and not as fatty, and the tripe was tender too. They give you a good amount of rare steak, and it wasn't the freshest, but still all right. The servers were nice enough to give us an extra side bowl of hot broth to cook the rare steak. I particularly liked the noodles as it was thin, soft, and soaked the broth well. I was looking for the fish sauce, but it wasn't on the table! Whaaat? A Vietnamese restaurant without fish sauce? That's blasphemous! I asked the server, and it was stored on the fridge. That was close! I was ready to give this a 1-star if it didn't have any.

For six people, they definitely didn't give us enough bean sprouts and basil. I can toss in the entire plate, which I did plus some more because a couple of my friends are against bean sprouts and basil.

I waited and waited for the coffee to filter through into the cup, and when I took off the filter, it was barely half full... Plus, the bottom had the condensed milk! Uhhhh, this is not enough, especially when I'm running on fumes. When I poured the coffee into the ice, it was thick! I had mostly condensed milk with bit of extra strong tasting coffee. You failed, sorry.

The service was good. There was an army of people just standing there waiting to serve! They were attentive, and refilled our water and brought whatever we needed in a timely manner. Also, the food came out quick.

Overall, that coffee was a complete failure, but I did enjoy the pho. You receive a good amount of meat and a decent size bowl of Pho. My favorite was the tendons, and the thin noodles make for easy eating and slurping. The broth was light and clean, but lacked fragrance. Would I come back here on my next visit? Eh, maybe. Probably not. :)

We've been coming year for yeeeears! We usually order the Phô GA with extra vegetables and spring rolls (those are the cold ones) and it is bomb!

Come early cause it can get really busy, this place is thee Phô spot in Vegas, tourists from all over make it a mission to come here. I order two waters because when it gets real busy your waiter won't pay you another visit.

Place is in the heart of Chinatown, plenty of parking outside, sometimes there's a longer wait for a booth but I never have trouble. I like the hot tea, comes as soon as you sit down.

Only negative is its diner style payment system, have to get up and go to the front to pay, obviously for logistic reasons due to the cafeteria style environment. Before you try other Phô places in town be sure to check this place out first.

I've been here twice on a recommendation of a local Uber driver (he knows where the good pho places are). He said that the broth here is better than the other restaurant we were planning to go to. I know I'm bad about writing a review from over a year ago but I recently went here again and the food was just as good!

Located in Chinatown, it's tucked away from the Las Vegas Strip. I got a rental car this time so I found the place pretty easily after a little GPS meltdown in Google Maps. I knew it was somewhere on Spring Mountain Road... Anyway, there's plenty of parking here in the lot and they are open pretty late.

My usual order was the pho special combo with beef on the side. Never disappoints and it comes out super fast. Their broth is very tasty and I did not notice any MSG in it. All of the ingredients were fresh and delicious.

They take credit cards which is always a plus. Minimum is $15.

This might be the best pho broth in Las Vegas. It doesn't mean that it's the best ever or that the other dishes are great. I've unfortunately run across a lot of places where the broth is lacking in LV. Since I'm already a fan of pho so 1 in the SFV, this was a definite yes for me.

Egg rolls seemed soggy and not crunchy as if they were retried or heated after already been cooked.

Summer rolls were delicious.

I'll be back to try other dishes.

We were famished when we got to Vegas and hit Chinatown first, we had read about Pho Kim Long and Pho so 1 but decided on this one because they had lots of dishes from the Bo Bay Mon.

The Pho came out barely warm, it seemed to be their problem, many reviewers also complained about this, I complained and they immediately replaced with another bowl with piping hot broth, the broth was amazing, it had the flavor of bone and well cooked beef instead of many pho restaurants using a lot of MSG and some can broth, this Pho is definitely a 4 stars, perhaps even 4.5 stars, the meat was plentiful.

The grilled beef was really grilled, the problem was they used lean beef so there was not as much flambe taste as would have been the case had they use a rib eye or a nice sirloin steak. It came with vermicelli, rice paper and vegetables. We would definitely come back for the Pho, I wanted to order the grilled ground beef wrapped with bacon but either did not see it there or forgot the name to order that, that dish is the best in the 7 course beef. Although they no longer served a 7 course beef as an entree, they had almost all the courses to be ordered individually, this became expensive at $24.99 for 2 for each course.

I would definitely come back, wish I could go back to Vegas already! all the Vegas buffets were lame except the Paris hotel buffet, I would like to go to the Chinese or Korean buffet they have in Chinatown, I have been going to Vegas for the past 24 years but this was only the 2nd time I went to Chinatown, it had grown so much, the only problem was it was far from the strip and the action.

"Knock knock!"
"Who's there?"
"Pho So 1"
"Pho So 1 who?"
"So I Pho So 1 muhfuckas wanna fine me. First ninjas gotta find me. What's 50 grand to a muhfucka like me?"
AHAHAHA! That was laaaaaame!!!

Vietnamese thits and rolls are what I had here. Egg rolls, spring rolls that gave me fat rolls. "Are you ready to order?" Ummm...we just got here, give us a chance.

Egg Rolls:
My friend loves their egg rolls so we got them. They were tasty and they were actually not bad but I just think Kinh Do's egg rolls are better. 3.5/5

Spring Rolls:
The spring rolls themselves seem a bit dry and they're not fresh. The peanut sauce was really runny. 1.5/5

#9 Pho Ribeye Steak:
Their pho comes in either small or large but I wasn't asked what size I wanted. Out comes a small bowl of lukewarm pho. The broth was lacking in flavor so I had to use a lot of Sriracha and Hoisin sauce. 2/5

#54 Bun Thit Nuong Cha Gio:
Charbroiled pork, egg rolls with vermicelli and veggies. This was good. The portion is pretty big. You get a good amount of protein and the noodles weren't dry even after re-heating. 4/5

Sure, they're open til 3am but there's another Vietnamese restaurant (PKL) not far from here that's open 24/7 and has better food. Pay at the counter when you're done but be careful because the floor is very oily and slippery. Gross!