Last visit: Dec 2022
First visit: Mar 2019
And we wrap up a very productive 2022 with our final outing of the year. We'd been to Pho-nomenal only once prior, and there's a story around it. I was experiencing mouth pain near my molars, so when that happened, I liked to have a bowl of pho to soothe the nerves. Only in this case, it didn't work. Two days later I was having a root canal for the first (and hopefully only) time in my life. No fault of Pho-nomenal of course, but unfortunate for them the event left a stigma in my mind. I barely recall what the food tasted like on that visit. The good news is that problem went away once and for all after the surgery. Finally, we agreed to face the notorious Powers traffic and have another lunch here.
When it comes to ambience, Pho-nomenal definitely is a cut above your usual noodle soup house. It's 2000 era sleek with chill music and trendy modern clean architect lines. They offer beer and wine in addition to the usual Vietnamese teas, coffees, etc... On this visit I went with a chicken and rice dish with Vietnamese iced coffee to drink. Mrs. RJG had a bowl of chicken pho. We started with a crispy eggroll. Things were going well until that appetizer arrived.
Mrs. RJG is not a big pork eater, and usually an Asian eggroll will have specs of pork with shredded veggies. In this case, it was a wad of pork and a little bit of lettuce/cabbage. Fine with me - it possessed a great flavor, but the Mrs. was turned off. Onto the meals. Not 30 seconds in, and Mrs. RJG barks that her pho wasn't very hot. That's highly unusual for Vietnamese places. Generally it's the other way around, and it's too hot (temperature)! This isn't going well at all. She surmised that the broth was hot but the noodles weren't, which offset the temperature. The chicken was essentially just boiled and that didn't help matters either. For myself, the rice was perfectly cooked and hot. But the chicken was lukewarm, pre-cooked, and some of the pieces were steroid-y/rubbery. Good flavor though, I must admit. They also do have bottles of Sriracha (not sure how they managed to secure those). The iced coffee was adequate, not exceptional (like, say, Zesty Thai's was last month). In any case, we both agreed that the food wasn't terrible by any means, just OK. As Mrs. RJG wisely noted: "It was good, just not phenomenal". Hmm-mmmm.
Service was, however, much better than average on this visit. Do we return? Probably not. Too many other pho places to revisit or try for the first time.
3/9/19; 12/31/22 (new entry)
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