Pho Ten - Richmond, BC

A friend suggest us to try Pho Ten, saying that that it's his favorite vietnemese restaurant in Richmond. We came here 15-20 mins before 12 and it wast fairly empty. The decor is not your usual vietnemese restaurant; it's very modern and if I wouldn't have guessed it's a vietemese restaurant if it wasn't for the sign.




We got seated right away. Because we love eating pho, we wanted to try out different things on their menu. We ordered a large beef pho to share ($8.5), a spring roll ($2.5), a deep fried shrimp paste on sugar cane ($2.95), and a viet sub ($5).

First came the shrimp paste on sugar cane. This isn't a common appetizer / snack that you find in a Vietnamese restaurant, at least we haven't seen it at the restaurants we've been to. The shrimp paste isn't dry and it is quite flavourful. I can usually chew the sugar cane and it is sweet but this sugar cane doesn't have any ate to it.  I am not sure if I can justify ordering it again given it's $2.95 for one but I do recommend it for those who haven't tried it before because it is quite tasty. 

We just ordered one spring roll to try and was glad that we can order it by pieces. Normally, they come in set quantity. One piece is $2.5 which is not cheap in my opinion. This spring roll taste like the ones we had that were made from one of our Vietnamese friends. The stuffings inside were more veggies than meat which may be the authentic way Vietnamese spring rolls were. The spring roll was fried just right. I hate it when the spring rolls are burnt. 

The chicken viet sub came. The bun was very crunchy and fluffy which I liked very much. However, i did not enjoy the chicken as much. The chicken had a very meaty taste to it that made it really not enjoyable to a point where I just wanted to take the chicken out and eat it without it. Maybe the other buns would taste better but I would definitely not be going there for viet subs. 

We ordered a large pho to share. The soup has very simple flavours and I find that it lacks the beef taste given it is a beef stock. The beef soup is on the sweet side and I can taste the MSG. That's probably one of the reason why it tastes so good. The beef tasted like it was frozen then thawed because it had that beefy taste. It might just be the batch that we were eating, can't say that it happens every time.




















Overall, it's an ok authentic Vietnamese restaurant. Food was all decent but I wouldn't go all the way there from Richmond City Centre to No. 5 Road to eat their pho.