Pho Old Saigon

I never review. Looked at the reviews after I sat down and ordered. Just had a good feeling and walked in. Great service. Spring rolls were perfect. Not overdone like most places. Tasted fresh.
Ordered PHO with raw steak #26. What else would you order? Got a small with extra meat. Wasn’t that hungry. Good portions and price matches the area. It’s Waikiki after all. Phở came hot with meat on the side. Tasted awesome. Phở came with plenty of sprouts, japs, Thai basil, and ngo gai. There was a lemon wedge too. I’m a lime fan but it’s dealers preference. Lots of place skimp on the accoutrements. I like it all. Saved the mint from my spring rolls to add to the flavors. Normal soy, hoisin, siracha on the tables.
No Thai hot pepper/​garlic sauce.
Good location. Off the main mall bullshit tourist strip. Why dumb asses wait hours to eat Cheesecake Factory or other chains places that are near the house baffles me. Strip club next door.
Money!

Food tastes great but the service is horrible. You feel like you are bothering them if you try to order anything. Almost impossible to get a refill for water, and they are standing right there watching you! Prices are also ridiculous, $ 13 for a bowl of Ph is outrageous when you can get the same bowl for about $ 7 elsewhere. The place is a tourist trap and you see very few locals eating here because it is too expensive. I was going to give them only one star but because the food tastes good they get two stars.

The food was bland and the waiter brought my friend the wrong food and expected him to eat it.
Also, don’t use the restroom. It was absolutely disgusting.

Came here to get my phở fix away from home. Ordered the bun bo hue and steak and shrimp dinner. Prices weren’t that crazy as everyone is stating. You have to realize your in Hawaii… Everything is going to be more pricey. Imagine what their rent and overhead costs are. People need to make a living too. The bun bo hue had good flavor and a good amount of meat. Steak and shrimp were good as well. We also ordered the fried spring rolls which also tasted fresh.

Great hole in the wall Vietnamese food! If you’re looking for great ambiance this is not your place
It does have that wonderful family owned and operated feel and the food is flavorful and we priced.

Very disappointing. No sate soup. Sandwich was dry because they put almost no mayo in it. Chicken wings were nothing special. Almost twice the price we pay in Canada and nowhere as good. Maybe there’s not much choice here, I don’t know.

Food was not fresh. The waiter, after being told that the cabbage was gross didn’t apologize, just got uncomfortable and walked away from us.

We stopped in for summer rolls filled with pork/​shrimp & vermicelli noodles and green papaya salad. The rolls were delicious with just right amount of meat vs noodles. The papaya salad was terrific and wasn’t as sweet/​spicy as other places. Yes, the prices are slightly higher but it’s located within 2 blocks of Waikiki Beach and rent is expensive. Service is excellent and quick. My favorite Vietnamese restaurant is still Phở Bistro 2 about 1.5 miles north.

Don’t ear here!!! Food was ok but definitely overpriced. The facility was FILTHY and the service was horrible!!!

Food is not bad, but overpriced. The owner is an old guy who serves as well, so I tipped him well anyway…

Went to this restaurant before Unilocaling and definitely would say it was a BIG mistake. The phở with raw beef and beef balls tasted a bit sour (didn’t seem very fresh), and seemed to have gone bad. The beef sandwich (can’t remember the name) was ok though.
Besides having disgusting phở, we ordered jackfruit and avocado drinks. They tasted disgusting so we took a couple of small sips and just asked for the bill. The avocado was bitter and didn’t taste like avocado and the jackfruit was sweet but once again tasted nothing like the fruit.
Anyhow…service was ok so left 15 percent tip or so…
A big waste of $ 40 USD!

Went here yesterday and was pretty disappointed. Everything on the menu was way over priced, seriously $ 13 for a mediocre bowl of phở? Service was minimal and they had the actually had the nerve to take on a 15% tip to the bill without any option, seems like they are pretty generous with themselves considering they forgot an item on my order until I told them and did nothing more than drop the dishes as my table and walk away. This place was a huge rip off and will never go back.

Like others have said, TOURIST TRAP!
This place is freakin expensive! Bowl of phở was like $ 13 – 14. Normally would be around $ ⁸⁄₉. My brothers got some satay beef dish for $ 18! They said it was very dry and started to eat my dish! I ordered the com tam (rice dish) pork chop plate which was about the same price as the bowl of phở. I like my dish, but for the price I would not come back. My mom order a dessert drink and it took forever to come out! It shouldn’t take long to make. It’s just a variety of cold ingredients mixed into a cup. We finished our meal and even received out bill and still have not received our dessert drink. We had to ask for it to be made to-​go.
We were so shocked when we saw our bill. Came out to be around $ 75 bucks for four dishes and one dessert drink. When we looked closely at the bill they already included the tip! What is dumb is that on the booklet where we put the credit card it said that they DON’T include the tip! Sooooo tricky!!! Be careful and look at the bill.
Would not be coming back again.

My family was craving Vietnamese food close to our hotel. We walked in and it was mostly full for a Wednesday night, so we thought it’d be a good spot to try.
The menu was super extensive and everyone knows that it usually means they probably do a lot of things mediocre and not anything special. My spring rolls (summer rolls, they call it) was sub par with too many noodles instead of veggies and meat. The sauce was a little on the sour side, so I had to just dip it with sirracha. The phở we had came out lukewarm, but tasted okay. The rice place came with 4 dinky shrimps and ONE piece of Kalbi.
This place is a hotel tourist trap and is definitely not worth your money.

There are really good cheap food on the island. This place is not one of them. I wouldn’t mind paying a bit more for savory phở, but dont expect that here. Got the phở with mixed meat. Definitely mediocre and overpriced.

i don’t know why this place gets such low ratings! but 4 stars from me!
I’m vietnamese and having grown up in VN and living in the bay area, i’ve been accustomed to yummy vietnamese food. my parents and i had lunch here the other day and it was so yummy!!! everything was delicious — from the phở to the vietnamese crêpe to the rice dish! in fact my parents eat here a couple times every time they go to hawaii. trust me, they wouldn’t eat here unless it’s good and it is!
i would only knock off one start because it is a bit on the pricier side for vietnamese food. but i guess you’re supposed to pay up since you’re in a touristy area right?

I had the Phở. It was ok, not super. But then, finding a reasonable restaurant with good Asian flavor and being able to identify the ingredients is a little difficult on this corner. I will place it in the dive category which may be appropriate given their ocean location. The place is not spotless. Take you chance if you want to try a non chain location. I did.

Waikiki, like most tourist traps, has a lot of mediocre, overpriced food. Honolulu has some great (and cheap) Vietnamese food, but you have to leave the Kalakaua/​Kuhio strip to find it. The food at Phở Old Saigon is pricey and not particularly memorable, but the location is right if you’re stuck in Waikiki.
I’ve tried the phở, spring rolls and bun bo hue and they’ve all been okay, but almost double the price of other Vietnamese restaurants. The bun bo hue tasted a bit muted the last time I ordered it, but the quantity of meat in the bowl was good and the bean sprouts on the side were fresh. The fresh fruit smoothies ($ 5) are good — I was impressed with the durian avocado and jackfruit smoothies. The menu is very extensive, featuring dozens of dishes to choose from. They also serve alcohol, including $ 4 beers.
The service is a bit slow. There is a language barrier that makes it a bit difficult to order, and they don’t even bring out glasses of water until you ask for them. The water was room temperature and tasted kind of weird on my last visit, so that’s something they could easily improve on for the future. The restaurant itself looks and smells like a typical cheap Vietnamese restaurant (i.e., kind of dumpy), but I haven’t seen anything dirty, including the dishes and utensils.
I’m sure I’ll be back in the future. I never wake up thinking «I want to eat at Phở Old Saigon today!», but it’s good enough compared to a lot of the other food in Waikiki.

Decided to give the place a shot since I previously heard good things about it. I should’ve read the reviews and pay heed to the two and lower star ratings since this is far from the best restaurant in Waikiki.
I stood at the front door for five minutes before I was sat. The restaurant wasn’t that busy, and at the time, it seemed like only one person was on the floor tending to people. I let that slide since it was just one person.
So I sat down and tried to order something from the menu. The man who took my order didn’t know what I was talking about even when I was pointing to what I wanted to order. He told me to tell the number on the order instead, so I did. Guess that’s to be expected, since there are about 100+ items on the menu.
I ordered the number 62: Sautéed Lemongrass Chicken. I was surprised to see how small the bowl of rice it came with was. Barely a scoop by normal standards. Water came AFTER my food arrived. That struck me as odd. Then when I finished my meal, a couple of people who came after me got their checks before I got mine. I actually had to get off the table after they cleared it off and go to the cashier myself in order to pay for the check.
Overall, food was okay, service subpar, and for a Vietnamese restaurant, it could be a lot better. Don’t think I’ll return anytime soon.

I’ve walked by this place at least a hundred times since it’s right on Kuhio. Despite the low reviews on Unilocal,I decided to give it a chance.
It’s not the cleanest place in the world, but on the scale of Vietnamese restaurants, I’ve been to worse. The décor is dated and tacky, but hey, the smell of the phở seemed authentic.
We were seated right away, and our order for phở was taken by the waitress. I named my dish in Vietnamese but she didn’t know what «phở dac biet» was. I gave her the number instead.
Our phở came out in about 10 minutes – not too bad. Every ingredient looked right. There was plenty of beef, the noodles were cooked to the right consistency, and the plate of sprouts and basil was fresh enough. I was, however, turned off by long strand of hair clinging to the side of the bowl when the server brought it. He pulled it off before setting the bowl in front of me. I’d say that works better than Dexatrim at curbing one’s appetite.
Taste-​wise, it was better than I expected. I would rate the food alone at 3 stars. The broth was very beefy in flavor but did not have the depth of really good phở. Note that it does have quite a bit of MSG.
I really wanted more water because of all the sodium not no one ever came to refill our glasses. At the end of the meal, I wasn’t able to flag anyone down to get my bill, so I went up to the counter to pay. The phở dac biet was $ 12.50, while the normal small phở was $ 9.50.