Pho Ban Mai

I don't know why, but sometimes the food and service is hit or miss. Need a refill on water? You'll probably have to flag someone down. Other than that, it's a clean place to take family and friends, and it's not crowded often. When the wife has cravings for Pho, atleast this place has fried chicken for the kid--and a tasty strawberry smoothie. Calamari is really good!

The service was great! Every staff member was really nice, and our orders were taken and served with surprisingly fast wait times. The food was also really good, especially their veggie fried rice. Everything we ordered tasted great. The only issue we had was the the beef tripe was a little hard to chew. The atmosphere was also nice. The calm music, the shut windows, and the ambient lights made for an immersive experience.

We were looking for a bite to eat for a late lunch. This place was rated high and figured we would give it a try. We ordered the summer roll with grilled pork as an appetizer. They were great and would order them again. My mom ordered the grilled pork with egg rolls. Both the pork and egg rolls had great flavor. My wife ordered the bun bo hue. She enjoyed it and I thought the broth had good flavor too. I ordered the beef steak cubes with fried rice. The dish came out on a sizzling plate with rice/salad on another plate. We enjoyed all of the dishes and would come back again.

There are a lot of Vietnamese restaurants in San Diego and the quality can vary, but this one is solid. Despite a wide variety of menu items, the food is consistently good. Typical of most Vietnamese restaurants, service is not the best. It's in a big shopping complex so parking is relatively easy. If you're looking for good Vietnamese food, this would be one of my first choices.

Good pho, authentic taste. Always quite busy and the waiters are decent. It was unfortunate that we were eating along with some extremely loud kids, and when I say loud I mean incessant screaming. Normally I don't really mind, but this was just not okay. I wish the parents did something, or at least the waiters could have stepped up and asked the parents to calm them down (there were quite a few waiters just standing around, it's not like they were powerless to do anything). Not saying that it is the waiter's job, but there is no way they didn't recognize the commotion and feel like it was a perfectly fine afternoon dinner experience for all the others there.