Pho Paya

You’re at Serramonte, wandering around the food court, pondering what to eat. Don’t make the mistake the I did and try this place.
I got sick after eating here. No need to put it in context. Nuff’ said.

Phở Paya is absolutely the worst place to have noodles of any kind. I went here thinking that it had a cute name and that it was different from other mall food places. Don’t be fooled! I ordered what I thought would be an equivalent to phở and my friend ordered a stir-​fry looking noodle dish.
His noodles were a mess of oil and soy sauce. Wasn’t appetizing at all. My noodle soup was on a thin disposable plastic soup bowl. Super weird. I thought it would break on me. The service was nonexistent and the food was awful. Never again

This place serves noodle soups and noddle dishes. There’s also a selection of Thai dishes, and Thai and Vietnamese iced seetened, coffee and tea drinks (including boba).
The food is fresh and tastes good, and the place is clean. This is right in the middle of a food court, but has its own seating (unlike the other food court places). And unlike the other food court places, this one serves fresh food cooked to order. Because of this it stands out as the best place in the food court. And one of the few where you can actually get spicy food.

I am so conflicted. I want to give Phở Paya 3 stars because the food is surprisingly good (not just because my expectations were low; it really was pleasant.) Plus, I like the cutesy name… ya gotta give 3 stars for the name.
But no.
I have to go with 2 stars.
There are 2 servers here that are downright, flat out rude. Like, they have permanent «I smell boo-​boo» looks on their faces. I’m not even asking you to be chipper or friendly, just don’t roll your eyes or sigh impatiently when I try to order or when I ask you if it’s white meat chicken in the dish
Also, I think Phở Paya is the most expensive place at the food court. Not good. It almost makes me want to jump in the long line next door at Panda Express where I can get rice & 3 items for like $ 8. My lovely lady companion & I had:
— 2 thai iced teas
— the shrimp eggroll appetizer
— crispy chicken fried rice for me (rice was flavorful & chicken was all white meat which I prefer. Dipping sauces were good.)
— shrimp salad for her
Grand total: $ 27
Broke.The.Bank. I was not a happy camper. I could’ve gone to a *real* restaurant for that price & at least the servers would’ve been a little nicer.

I should have known better and listened to the little voice in my head as soon as I walked in here with my kid.
The voice was saying, «Jimminy Crickets, get out… get out!»
I failed to heed the warning but I learned my lesson.
I should have paid attention that the two guys working the counter were not Vietnamese. Then when they didn’t know that Vietnamese Coffee can be poured over ice, I should have paid attention to the warning signs. He said, «We don’t put ice with our coffee.» When I did ask for ice, the guy said a resounding NO!
What The PHO?!
I’d rather pee on this place with a cutesy name.

Damn it, I really wanted to give this place a better review. what the phở???
So I went here and ordered the crispy chicken with fried rice and thai ice tea and roti prata with condensed milk. I was pleased with the friendly staff and low price of $ 10 and now I was anticipating the final decision– the taste of the food.
When I tried the crispy chicken it was decent and the sauce that it came with was actually really good. But when I ate the rice, thats when things went down hill. The rice tasted a bit off. It had a fish sauce taste to it and kind of stale-​ish, it simply was not good. So I moved on to the dessert– the roti prata with the condensed milk– it was surprisingly good.
Overall, I give this place some credit for the effort with room for improvement.

Phở-​Paya is definitely false advertisement. I was disappointed to only find out they had TWO phở dishes at this place. Why name your restaurant PHO-​paya when you’re only going to serve two phở dishes and not have a single dish that has «paya» in it either. Or why name your restaurant PHO-​paya when all your serving is THAI dishes? They could have named this place PHO-​PAD or THAI-​paya or something Thai of that sort.
Anyway, the disappointment of a falsely advertised name was followed by the disappointment of unsatisfactory food. I ordered the calamari since it looked so pretty on their menu, but once my food arrived I was left with a breaded mess. My calamari looked nothing like how it did in the picture– not only did it not come in the usual calamari rings and tentacles (it looked like breaded scallops), they didn’t serve it with the red sauce that was in the picture nor did it even come with a lemon. I’m glad I didn’t try anything else in that restaurant because if the calamari already failed as an appetizer, what more to an entrée?

The Phở is this?
I was at the mall with my coworkers during lunch. I wanted something different and decided to pass up on the delicious Panda Express and the very high class McDonalds. I walked into this nice looking restaurant at the end of the food court. It was clean, bright, and cute cashier. I look at the menu. Pad Thai!!! I quickly walked back out to the front to see their sign, I have not mistaken it said Phở Paya. This place is barely Two Asians, Three Whites, and 1 Latino work there. Sounds like a beginning of a joke.
I decided to settle on the Egg Plant over rice. It was not bad, a bit pricey because its mall food but I was okay with that. The Vietnamese menu was very limited. 3 kinds of phở, spring rolls, and the rest is quasi chinese and thai food. This place has seats, and it was empty while panda express had a long line. I should have known better.

I had the green papaya salad and VT coffee here, which was OK. Peanut amount was insane, but it was OK and a large portion, and not bad for a food court area. Then we went back and I tried the Phở ga (chicken), my typical phở choice as I don’t regularly eat beef. HORRIBLE. It smelled… chemical-​like. You could see the powder mix floating on the top of the broth. I can’t really describe it, but it was so many shades of terrible — avoid. My man and I both had stomach aches afterwards. The roti (to make up for it) was tasty, but I’m not how anyone could mess up fried+sweetened condensed milk. (all other rotis I’ve had are much better, but even at it’s worst this dish is tasty!)
Also, very awkward to get your own basil and sprouts and lime — you have to sort of pluck and rip the vegetables at that side area or put it all on a napkin to carry back to your table. And they were blaring both transformers and background music at the same time. Transformers would die down for whatever scene and then you’d notice blaring music from some other source. All very manic and confusing.
I went back for Phở, but I wouldn’t go back again. I’m guessing this is why there were lines at the japanese place and panda but not here.

Not bad for mall food.
Would I come back here again? Eh… Maybe.

I got the pineapple fried rice even though this place is supposed to be Vietnamese food, it has lots of Thai food on the menu. How is it possible to make the rice taste bland… well…if you use not so sweet pineapples, that happens… but hey, Renato H.‘s pad thai was pretty good. It doesn’t have grease dripping from it, and it has fresh bean sprouts and lots of peanuts.
But when you notice that the soda fountain dispenser actually has a label called «soda», you know something here isn’t all that it could be. I kinda wonder what that flavor is? Drinks have free refills, so that’s a plus. Mel P. hilariously sparkled at the movie showing of «The Rundown» on the plasma TV at the center of the dining area… but that’s cause Dwayne Johnson is her «husband». It’s safer if a restaurant just stick with one type of food instead of trying to be everything to everyone… I mean you don’t see Sbarro pizzeria try to sell sushi rolls, do you?

Yes its mall food, but… Walk in on a busy Friday at Serramonte, no one else in the place. Had to fight through the long line at Panda Express to try something different. Staff seemed disinterested.
Got my food, saw a caterpillar crawl across my son’s dried out dim sum. Went back to exchange, no apology, next batch came back with another species of insect crawling across it. Went to eat my Pad Thai with the thinnest fork known to mankind, but it kept bending so I wasn’t able to pick it up. Tried the chopsticks (which look like it whittled out back), better luck. Pad Thai looked okay, but very dry and tasteless. Needed a drink, but the root beer was clear. I guess I should go the Sprite route instead, since I know that’s a clear drink. Time to use the napkin, I didn’t know they make napkins as thin as kleenex. I guess they do.
Hard to get on mall food, but its a fairly new place and the kitchen was a mess. A place that buys the cheapest utensils ever, lets me know they try to skimp everywhere they can, which includes the food they serve. AVOID!!!

Ahhh yucky yucky! This place is freakin disgusting! Save your stomach and skip this place. The service here sucks balls and the food sucked even more!
I got the bbq chicken and it tasted like crap! I couldn’t even bring my starving self to eat more than half the chicken! So I just ate the rice. When I left my stomach started hurting and I’m still super hungry but I don’t have the appetite to eat now! =(
Oh yeah and for some nasty food and a thai ice tea it cost me $ 10 and that went down the drain because I didn’t even finish half of my food!

I had to wait on my parents who needed to do some ‘chop-​eeng’ at Serramonte, and soon enough I was starving. Manila Bay Cuisine, Panda Express, and Sbarro had super long lines, so I decided to go for the Phở place at the end of the line.
San Jose spoiled me with wonderful phở at 2AM that has more vegetables than a grocery stand. I had Phở-paya’s standard beef phở. The flavor is nothing to write home about. Everything sort of tasted the same, even the slices of beef somehow had no taste. There were no vegetables with my phở, WTF? Phở is usually some proportion of meat, noodles, vegetables and broth.
Phở-​paya isn’t exactly OMG BEST FOOD EVER!1 like I experienced in my college days, but for a change of pace to the usual suspects at Serramonte this fits the bill. It certainly beats the same ol’ bangus plate over at Manila Bay Cuisine.

A nice change from the usual serramonte mall food. For a food vendor that has «phở» in its name, I was a little surprised to see that the choices for the phở are very limited. You know, usually when you go to a phở restaurant, the first page is filled with a list of meat and cow innards combination that you can put in your phở. Like, phở with rare steak, Phở with rare steak and tripe, phở with rare steak, tripe, and flank, etc etc. Phở-​Paya has one or two of the basic phở, the rest are some weird phở dishes I’ve never seen before.
I had the roast duck noodle or something like that. It wasn’t bad. Not spectacular though. I’m hoping their rice plates are better than their noodles.
Service is friendly, and the place is clean. I like the TV inside, especially when they have a DVD of Candy Candy (
). Too bad it wasn’t actually playing (it’s stuck on the DVD menu).

2 stars?! C’mon people, what did you guys order? Water and soy sauce? This place is VERY underrated. Went there for the first time and this place caught me by surprise. They had a number of dishes you can choose from and for 5.95 for most dishes (exception of sea food), you can’t beat it. I had the Pad Se Yu and portion was bigger than I expected. Noodles were flavorful and wasn’t too oily. They also did not skimp on the chicken.
I was full after my meal, but looking at the menu again, we noticed dessert for 1.95, how can you resist! Ordered the fried banana with ice cream. This dessert was huge! Easily can be split by 3 people. You get 4 generous portions of fried banana and 2 big scoops of ice cream. You also get your choice of toppings, we got chocolate syrup and condensed milk. My new favorite spot to eat in the mall.

For mall food, 4 stars for the Pad Thai, really. I liked it. The woman working at the counter was really sweet too. Plus, Phở-​Paya has their own dining area so you don’t feel like you’re in a food court, as much.
Other than lemonade at Hot Dog on a Stick, it’s the only thing I’d get in this food court. However, if they still had 1 Potato 2 and I still ate meat, I would totally get the Beef Stroganoff Potato with extra butter!

Whooooooooo Caresssssssssssssss about the last 5 Unilocalers who gave their ridiculous and nonsense reviews of the Phở — Paya Noodle House!!! All I have to say to all of you last 5 Unilocalers out there, I just went there today for the very first time at Phở — Paya Noodle House, I really love this place!!!
I just had myself the most awesome delicious special fried noodle as soon as I ate up the special fried noodle I said to myself for me this is the most delicious special fried noodle that I have ever eaten at Phở — Paya Noodle House!!!
Back then, I used to remember this place was once a Betty Boop after that it was Lori’s Diner and now they opened up a Phở — Paya Noodle House…
To all of you last 5 Unilocalers out there who wroteeeeeeeee outttttttttttttt this very dumb Unilocal review get this you Unilocalers your Unilocal reviews will not stop me from having lunch at this lovely Phở — Paya Noodle House Period!!!

So we had their food a few time’s first time it was OK but left me with the worst cotton mouth… thanks MSG!
Then we went again, got my order totally wrong and there I was stuck wasting my entire lunch waiting because the girl didn’t understand that I didn’t want MINT she thought I said MEAT.
Then we had the calamari and let me just say a paper towel or something to soak up the oil would of been nice there greasy and gross…
Sorry Phở Paya you may be local and we may eat there again for the basic change of pace of the typical mall food but we wont be going out of our way!
EDIT: To the guy William B for giving them a 5 you tend to give everyone a 5 is there never anything wrong with where you go? Lets be serious here buddy… You have quite a long list of reviews and not one has a 1, 2, or 3! Our opinions are our opinions and bashing us for them isnt cool.

The worst Vietnamese food I have ever tried. We ordered Phở Bo or Vietnamese noodle soup, fried spring rolls & special fried noodle. The soup is very small and no taste whatsoever! Instant noodle for 69 cents at 99 ranch is much better! Spring rolls no taste! I give one star to the special fried noodle, which is basically a chowmein.
Do yourself a favor and go to Great Khan’s Mongolian BBQ or Panda Express. Even Manila Bay Cuisine, which is so disgusting, is better than Phở-​Paya.
Oh, grab a menu and read the company’s mission, vision, and values! Oh okay, I’ll type it below:
Mission — «To exceed guests’ expectations with unique, fun concepts and outstanding service and to encourage both personal development and fulfillment of the staff.» Encourage the staff’s personal development and fulfillment, huh?
Vision — «Be recognized as an original and amusing restaurant. Solid and professional, with human quality and ethical principles, that offers excellent services and products to its guest; to develop possibilities for personnel and fair treatment to its suppliers; well-​trained management who works in collaboration with the local community.» Suppliers too?
Values — «Respect Professionalism Enthusiasm Commitment Justice» JUSTICE? Wow