2610 Broadway

Redwood City, CA 94063

Tel: 650 298 9900

Fax: 650 298 9909

I used to eat at Pho Dong just about every other day when I was working in Redwood City. It had to be the best pho I've had on the peninsula and I've been to tons of places over there. After the first few visits the clerks remembered my name and even recognized my voice on the phone when I called in orders. Now that's homie! After trying the major variation on their menu I quickly established a regular order. That was the large B17 steak, flank, tendon, and tripe. And here's my review:

Taste:
The most important part of pho, in my opinion, is the broth that all the ingredients float around in. On top of the taste it has to be very hot. If not, you may end up undercooking your beef. Anyway back to taste. The broth they have here is one of the best I've tasted ever. I don't even feel the need to add hoisin sauce or plum sauce that places usually have in squirt bottles on the table. Of course you gotta have the spicy sriracha though. You can tell that the broth has been slow cooked for a long time as it doesn't have that watered down flavor and has a very nice color to it. The quality of the beef, tripe, and tendon are of satisfactory quality but it is usually very hard to tell this after its been dunked in the broth. No complaints from visual inspection. The fixins' (mint, bean sprouts, lemon, jalepinos) are suprisingly picked and sorted out to make sure you don't get a bitter mint leaf or green bean sprout. Everything else is pretty standard for pho.

Authenticity:
Now I'm no pho historian but authentic pho to me has trimmings and cuttings like tripe and tendon. I'm not down with just beef noodle soup. Places call it that and don't add the "good stuff" so the non-educated don't get scared away. Luckily this place makes it any way you want it and I opt for the tripe and tendon. They even offer fatty or lean which is a rare option in pho restaurants. Again it's really hard to guage the authenticity of pho because you don't really know everything they're putting in there. But I do taste a secret component in the broth that I doubt is authentic to Vietnamese cuisine. That would be the only thing that brings down this rating.

Consistency:
This place is very reliable when it comes to consistency. Either that or they prepare a special batch just for me but I seriously doubt they'd do that. I've never detected an oddity in recipe in the probably hundreds of times I've eaten the B17. It just gives me that warm fuzzy feeling inside... the good kind, not the run to the bathroom after 15 minutes kind.

Cost to Serving:
Pho is known to be a very cheap yet filling dish. You know something is off if you ever have to pay more than 5 or 6 bucks for a large run-of-the-mill bowl of pho. Non r-o-t-m being something like seafood pho, which Pho Dong also serves by the way. I can't remember the exact cost but it wasn't more than 5 bucks for a large order of this dish and by no means was this rotm. In the end my stomach is pretty happy here along with my wallet.
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Actual price paid: ~$5-6
Price I'd pay: $8
Cumulative rating: 8 out of 10
Good pho even for die-hard pho eaters.
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