Xe Lua Vietnamese Restaurant

This place is a hit or miss. The Phở at time can have smaller portions of noodles while if you order any noodle soup dishes, they can be plentiful. a good, affordable place to eat with friends and for a quick place to eat as well.

There are MUCH better places you can go instead for phở. First of all, the noodles they serve here are the cheap, flimsy, and slippery kinds, and they never seem to stick onto your utensils which makes the simple task of just eating them a hassle. The broth lacks the same interesting flavor you would expect from other phở joints, it’s uninspired and very substandard in my opinion. Also, I tried their Vietnamese sausage roll… biggest mistake. The ingredients used to make it were just disgustingly old. The lettuce looked like they were taken from the waste bin of a Mr. Sub, and the meat and wrappings were dry and flavorless.
DO NOT come here and expect a great experience!

Pros:
Fairly extensive menu. Lots of options.
Free WiFi — ask for the password. At the moment, it’s 88 228 822. It works quite well. Score!
Chili oil — Sriracha is standard. Chili oil is a plus.
Vermicelli with spring rolls, Vietnamese sausage (possibly called raw meat on the menu…) and grilled chicken looked delicious. Heard the spring roll was fairly authentic, with taro bits in it.
Presentation for the curry goat with rice was not bad.
Cons:
Rare beef phở (small size — $ 6.50) — I’ve never had a small phở this small before. There were two individual soup bowls worth of noodles in the small phở. The beef was cooked by the time they gave it to me, thus defeating the point of having rare beef. It doesn’t count as rare unless it’s rare when served to me. It’s like serving cooked salmon as sashimi… Not only was it cooked, but it was tough to eat. Leathery. Not cool.
Curry goat — sauce was very watery. When my mom informed the waitress, the waitress said it was because they use the same curry sauce for the curry noodle broth as well, and that the consistency of the sauce is fine because it’s good if you want to dip bread in the watery sauce because the bread will soak it all up. Ridiculous excuse. If you have broth-​like soup and you dunk bread in it, the bread will most certainly soak up the broth, but it will also go extremely soggy even if it doesn’t break apart on you. This was actually the second excuse the waitress made for this curry dish, the first being that they don’t serve roti because Chinese people don’t like roti. They prefer bread, and so Xe Lua only serves rice, noodles, or French bread. Um… okay then. Hi! I’m a Chinese person who likes roti. I know many Chinese people who like roti. I don’t mind if you tell me you don’t have it on your menu, but don’t tell me it’s because I have supposedly strange tastes for an Asian person.
Limes — I have a friend who introduced me to a very interesting way of eating phở. Take a whole bunch of lime wedges (I asked for extras), and squeeze them all into your broth. Then, take the sweet sauce and squeeze a generous amount into your broth. What you end up with is a slightly tangy, but not overwhelmingly sour broth. It’s oddly refreshing, but still savory. The unfortunate thing about the limes here are that they’re turning brown. Yeah.
I will probably be back (how unfortunate) because this place is fairly close to my house, but I don’t think I’ll be getting the phở or the curry again.

Xe Luanda is a Vietnamese restaurant in the Leslie/​Finch shopping plaza. It replaces an older Viet restaurant but doesn’t look as though much has changed. The interior is very clean though and the menu is fairly large.
I ordered a grilled chicken with pork skin on rice, while the gf got their special phở. The grilled chicken tasted good but portion size was pretty small. The pork skin was bland with no seasoning. Lots of rice though, which can be a plus or minus depending on how hungry you are. The phở noodles were fatter rice noodles like you find in some chinese dishes, and not like you find in Vietnamese places. The meat was pretty scarce and there are way too many fatty pieces to justify ordering again.
The prices are pretty standard with phở around the $ 7 – 8 range and rice dishes around the same. They have a pretty decent drinks menu and they have other dishes I hadn’t seen before like surf clam rolls, but still need to work on their phở and rice if they want to be better.

Every Xe Lua location in the GTA has been very consistent in the quality of food and service.
The Phở is very delicious in the hearty Phở broth, the amount of noodles and the amount of meat you receive in each bowl of phở you order.
The other menu items (Vermicelli, Rice, Curry) are other key items you should consider ordering if you are looking for a change of scenery from phở once in a while.
Overall, the service of this location is very decent and the waiters are very attentive if you have a request that needs to be addressed.

I don’t understand the harsh reviews on this place… Went here for the first time 2 weeks ago and there werent many people there, hence service was pretty decent for me. I only came to order phở. The broth was flavourful, the meat was nice just how i like it (cut thinly and small). I don’t normally get rare beef, however the tripe was pretty standard too. The only thing I disliked was their noodles… it was too wide and filling for my taste (hence the ⁴⁄₅ star). Besides the thickness of the noodles… I would say everything else was decent. The waitress was kind enough to let us know that I ordered one of the milkshakes that it wouldnt be fresh fruit being used, but powder instead. I was grateful for that and changed my drink order.

Literally sat down, ordered and received our foods within minutes!!!
Atmosphere was bright clean place with many tables. Sat at the booth and was very comfortable.
Had the vermicelli but the pork was kinda bland. The spring roll was crispy and the vegetables were fresh. Portions were really big!
The noodle soup was tastier! The broth was full of colors and full of flavors. Will visit again when we’re in the area.

Crowded, noisy and hot! Something was wrong with the heat today. Service not so great. Under staffed. Kept getting the orders wrong, the bills wrong. Restaurant is super crowded, there’s barely enough space to walk through.
I don’t really like the phở here because they use the thicker wider noodles. I personally like the thinner noodles. Today I also ordered a mango salad, comes with fresh mangos, onion and peppers. More mangos than anything else. It was pretty good except 6 dollars seems a bit steep. Seems like just a place to grab a quick bite. Quality of food okay but service not so great.

So being very critical with my phở experiences, I’ve decided to finally write review for Xe Lua Vietnamese Restaurant. They are a small restaurant chain with around 3 locations in Toronto. One in Vaughan, Chinatown and now North York. The north york location replaced the awful Top Saigon but in my opinion made no difference in the quality of the phở.
The atmosphere is clean, modern and comfortable. The service is quick but not too friendly as most of them are run by mainlanders with rude attitude. What comes with quick service is poor food quality. The portions are fair but should be more careful with how they cook the food. You’ll find that their noodle soups, or phở in the case, are fatty and greasy. You can tell that they take the rice noodles right out of the packaging, place it in a ladle, cook it in a water boiler and dump it directly into the bowl. They don’t bother hanging the ladle for a few mins to drain the water and oil. (Seen with my own eyes). So what you’re left with is fatty phở and a bit of regret after eating it. As an experienced chef, this is not acceptable and makes me sick to my stomach… literally.
The great thing about Xe Lua and the reason why I gave 2 out of 5 is they tend to open pretty late to accommodate the bar and club goers. So if you’re out late and need something to relieve your alcoholism then this is best place to go. Just be cautious of the s.w.a.t. team… get it? if not then watch this —

Vietnamese phở! Huge portion sizes, great value, fast service. Also has rice dishes, vermicelli dishes, Asian appetizers, sweet drinks.
I’ve said most of these things in my review of the downtown Spadina location of Phở Xe Lua:

Super fast service, got our phở within 5min just because we wanted to grab a quick lunch. The three color dessert was pretty good, there was kidney beans, mung beans, black-​eyed peas, tapioca, jelly, fruit, and coconut cream. Sweetness went well with the phở, I liked it.

The restaurant is amazing I loved the service and really enjoyed the food. The environment in the restaurant is just breath taking. The waiters in the restaurant are very kind and they know what they’re doing.