Our first time here, we picked the place because of good reviews, so we were disappointed with our experience.
Pho 54 is a smartly decorated little restaurant in a plaza with a number of restaurants catering to UB North Campus. We showed up on a Saturday night and were surprised to find such a highly reviewed restaurant practically empty. We walk in and are shown to our table. BANG. I hit my knee underneath - it's apparently one of those tables with the gas cooker underneath in case you to do something like shabu-shabu.
While we browse the menu, it's a fusion menu with Vietnamese / Thai and Sushi. I'm a little wary of these kinds of menus - if you can't specialize, then is the food going to be any good?
While we browse, a lone Westerner sits down behind me. These booths are those cheaply made booths were you can practically feel the pulse of the person up against you. And like a bad plane ride, this person decides he's going to shove and push against me.
After a long wait, the waiter takes the Westerner's order first. Our table - we all immediately exchange looks. It's pretty bad to have poor service, but when the lone waiter doesn't take the orders in order of seating, that also means your food will show up later.
Our waiter comes across like a character - slacker dude with manbun. We order appetizers and pho - I choose the Pho Bo (Beef), my friend chooses the Hu Tieu Nam Vang (shrimp, calamari, pork). Then we wait.
And wait.
And wait.
And sure enough, lone Western dude gets his food first. He gets his appetizer, he gets his main course. The waiter fawns over him, asking him about his food, how he likes the restaurant and if the broth is too hot or not.
Finally, we get our appetizer. Manbun drops the plate in the middle of the table (2 summer rolls) and leaves. Forgetting to provide us with setups and plates, we spend the next 10 minutes trying to wave him over, but he's preoccupied with the cash register and some activity back in the kitchen. I'm waving hard enough to flag 10 NYC taxis but Manbun doesn't notice.
While we're flagging him, I notice the Health score here - 74% - and give the place the eye.
When Manbun finally sees us, I ask him for plates, setups (chopsticks, forks, napkins) and he trots off to get those for us. We each grab a roll. The pulled chicken inside is so chewy, the fibers pull apart from the roll.
Our pho arrives. My beef pho has disappointingly thin broth. A good pho has broth that has been simmering for hours. This has all the depth of a ramen noodle spice pack stirred in hot water. The beef is overcooked, chewy. My friend is very disappointed with his bowl as well as he counts out the 3 shrimp in the entire bowl. There are 4 rings of calamari. That's it.
So a disappointing meal at an otherwise well-reviewed Yelp restaurant. I have a theory - I'm guessing that hungry college students are scoring the place based on convenience. It's literally just across from North Campus. I also wonder if the empty Saturday night meant that without their usual student clientele (it's summer break), the kitchen at Pho 54 just didn't put as much care into their food as they normally would.
Good food makes you forget bad service, but with the double whammy of mediocre food and indifferent service, Pho 54 did not impress.
3 stars for food ***
2 stars for service ** read more