Pho Ao Sen

Best pho broth in Oakland! We came on a Thursday for lunch. We both ordered the #1 - pho dac biet $14.50. I should have gotten the #2 because that one came with beef balls for the same price. The broth tasted clean and is the best I've had in Oakland. It is one of the best in the bay for sure. We also had the chicken wings, very tasty and an ice coffee. They make their iced Vietnamese coffees with crushed ice. It was fragrant with a hint of hazelnut. So darn good. Great job my friends Pho Ao Sen. We had an awesome lunch.

The restaurant was clean. However, at the time we were there the bathroom had no paper towels. Nothing to wipe your hands. Given that we are still in Covid-19 this surprising. Also, the hand sanitizer outside the restroom was empty! Not good! To the dishes we ordered: Spring Rolls, just two, was kind of expensive (almost $9). Beef noodle (#3) was so so, I have had better. Other dish was number (#36), which was just average. Overall the dishes we ordered were just average.

I have to say this place serves decent pho, but the prices are little bit expensive for such quite small portion of noodles. There are many pho places in East Bay have bigger portion with similar prices. This place seems to have an extra charge (it's called non-cash adjustment) for customers using a credit card, which I don't think I saw any signs of notifying customers or the cashier has the courtesy to tell us. A mediocre place receives no more than 3 stars review.

Service was extremely poor. The people were polite, but botched up our order. Pho Dac Biet was mediocre and was definitely not worth the wait and was not the size that was ordered. We ordered 2 large and received 1 large and 1 medium. The only redeeming quality was that our appetizers were better than the actual entree, which was the chicken which was pretty good. Overall, poor service, mediocre food.