Saigon Garden

What I ordered: I had the Saigon special $ 9.95– BBQ pork chops, chicken, and spare ribs with rice and egg for lunch.
How was the food: Delish. It was nice and tasty but not tasty tasty where the salt goes directly to your feet.
Service: Cashier/​order taker was nice and polite. She got our order correct.
Recommend?: Yes. It is better than I think most other places in the food court.

Update– restaurant is now called Phở Factory. Not sure if they are the same owners or not, but they don’t have the crabmeat noodle soup on their newer menu :*(
Past review:
I really love their crabmeat noodle soup! I first fell in love with this dish at my fave phở restaurant (Phở Thinh), but they only offer it on Saturdays :(thus, it’s been my mission to find a place that serves it good and regularly. After trying several phở places I must admit that Saigon Garden has the best! Woo hoo! Total surprise coming from a restaurant in Ala Moana food court.
I tried the phở and bun bue (spicy beef soup) here before too, both are also good. But crabmeat noodle soup is the winner!

This place sucks! Didn’t think it was possible to screw up oxtail soup but they did. Meat was hard and rubbery as Hell like they didn’t even cook it. $ 10 and there were only 3 pieces of meat. Wtf??? My wife had the phở and she said it sucked too. Isn’t phở supposed to be a Vietnamese signature dish?
DON’T GO HERE!!!

I love the Ala Moana food court. It kinda reminds me of the mall food courts in Asia, except more American. :p At the very least, it presents a very wide variety in international cuisine at an affordable price range for the weary traveler or the weary shopper. I am the latter and after wandering around this gigantic mall I’m always famished but seeing all the skinny and stylish Japanese tourists puts me in the mood for something on the lighter side. They have a good BBQ pork bahn mi on French baguette, with plenty of pickled radish, cilantro, and pork. They use mayo instead of pâté, but that’s okay. The sandwich and a can of green tea fills me up but still gives me the feeling that maybe after more wandering around I could build up some room for a snack from some other place in the food court. It has yet to happen, but I like the feeling.

Yesterday I stopped here to check this place on my lunch break. I’ve never eaten here but I’ve always been a fan of Vietnamese food. It’s always been on the lighter side of the spectrum and that’s good. especially when I’m at work. I don’t need to be dragged down by heavy gravies and such.
I went ahead and ordered up the bbq combo over rice noodles. Instant win here. Thinly sliced beef and chicken were spread over the noodles along with a spring roll. It was quite filling and very tasty. I’d like to try the phở here as well as the crispy chicken over fried rice.
The service here is great. The ladies behind the counter actually talked story with me while I waited for my food. A food court first.
So it’s needless to say that I’ll be coming back. I just wish it wasn’t so expensive. Yes, it’s the food court in Ala Moana, but $ 9.95 a plate is too much.

whenever i go to a restaurant and find something much better than the average, i end up ordering the same thing every time i go. bbq chicken viet sandwich is one of those things… better than the «competitor’s» slimy chicken sandwich. its lite, vegi, carb, and you can add your own fish/​hot sauce as needed, and i don’t get tired of it that fast, so i don’t have to sit around and judge it the whole time while i’m eating and just down it real quick.

Just ordered the spring rolls and was pleasantly suprised. Fresh and crispy with romaine lettuce, mint sprigs, carrots and some white root vegatable, with fish sauce & sweet n sour sauce. A nice, cheap snack.

So bad. Had the chicken over vermicelli and the it was so greasy that it defeated the point of having Vietnamese. tWas a sad disappointment.

Limited menu, which is fine for a food court. I got my usual vermicelli rice noodle with bbq pork and spring roll… except that they didn’t have it on the menu, so I got it with the spring roll on the side.
The food took um pretty much forever to come out (about 10 minutes) which would be fine if it tasted fresh and hot. But oh it was not. The bbq pork was tasty but had lots of fatty bits clinging to it which made it hard to eat. The noodles were really soft and a little mushy. They forgot to give me my egg roll. And then when I did go back to get it, it was very small and hard and had been sitting there in the display for way too long :(
The portion size was what I suppose you can expect for a high-​rent area like the food court. Comparable to any other place in there. Meaning not huge and not small.
For the same price, if you’re hankering for Vietnamese, walk to Green Papaya across from Walgreens on Keeaumoku.

I got the meat noodle combo and my girlfriend got the meat phở.
The meat noodle combo was a-ok.if i were to rate it on a scale of 1 – 10 10 being the best and 1 being the worst, the bbq meat noodle combo is an 7.5.
The meat phở on the other hand was YUCK. If i were to open a package noodle up and use the soup base in that to make the phở, it would have made the phở taste like a 10 compared to the base that they used. The base was bland and disgusting.
Overall if you stay away from the phở i think you’ll be OK eating here.

I love the Alamo Food Court so I had to go check this out. I’ve been there twice so far, had the Vietnamese sandwich the first time and their 2-​item combo the second time. Both items were decent — not great — but the thing that really held this place back is the portion sizes, which are too small.
For instance, my 2-​item combo was the same price as a 2-​item combo from Panda Express, around the same quality of ingredients, but much lighter in weight. If I were a smaller mammal this would probably be OK, and then it wouldn’t seem overpriced, but I’m not, so it is…
But then again so are most things in Alamo are overpriced, so whatcha gonna do.
The Vietnamese sandwich was tasty but again, the same sandwich costs $ 2 less at Ba Le, so… Not enough food for the money… Sorry!