Pho

Phở is yet another chain to land in Birmingham with the renovation of New St Station/​Grand Central. It’s named after the Vietnamese noodle soup that has reached legendary culinary status and whose appreciation has grown exponentially in recent years. Phở has opened their 17^th location in Birmingham, providing their take on traditional Vietnamese street food.
It’s not atypical to find a Vietnamese restaurant menu the size of a bible, but Phở has distilled the essence of Vietnamese cuisine down to one large page. These include starters like goi cuon (rice paper rolls), salads, a large selection of phở, and other entrees like bun (vermicelli noodles), fried noodles, and rice. The back page of the menu includes a small selection of wine, beer, juices, and teas. For a Grand Central restaurant, the seating is adequate and the wait time is either non existent or reasonable during all but the busiest of times. Phở holds a takeaway only line near the entrance of the restaurant. On my first visit I entered the takeaway line (it was quite busy) by accident before realizing my error and waiting even longer for a host to show up and show me a table. My second visit was much smoother in this regard and I was seated right away. While I haven’t tried the phở yet, the bun is a very faithful rendition to the classic noodle dish. I’ve indulged in both the veggie spring rolls and the tofu & mushroom versions. For vegetarians like me, Phở provides a choice of veggie broth and veggie or tofu versions of most dishes, marked as chay on the menu. The flavors are fresh, but are not as robust as I would expect from an approximation of street food dishes. It’s easy to doctor them up though with the table side accompaniments, including Huy Fong sriracha straight from California.
Overall I like the vibe, menu, and generally the flavors of Phở. The prices are a bit high for the portion size and the type of menu items though. I hope that at the corporate level they consider expanding their menu, as now it feels like Vietnamese cuisine for beginners. While it’s not the best, it is still one of my top choices to grab a bite in Grand Central.

So after finally trying this place out and taking Laura C with me I found the food experience lacklustre.
It was a Thursday at just before 3:30pm, so it wasn’t busy. We were seated very quickly as to be expected and opted for a table overlooking the grand central atrium.
I opted for a starter a main and tea, Laura going for the main, desert and a coffee later.
My starter was the prawn summer role (no attempts on remembering the official name) it’s essentially prawns with rice noodles and vegetables wrapped in a rice wrap — it tasted of nothing. I had to soak it in the chilli oil sauce to get any flavour from it at all. Laura described the texture accurately but for the sake of this review its like eating a piece of rubbery bag filled with vegetables. You feel healthy when eating it but it gives you no satisfaction.
We both opted for the Phở as a main, that’s what this place is really for right?
I had Phở Tom which is prawns, it’s like a bowl of ramen and if you don’t know what that is that’s a big bowl of broth with noodles and then some type of chicken and vegetables.
The first few sips of the broth left a peanut after taste, I’m not sure why. It may have had that ingredient but I don’t remember seeing it on the menu. There was nothing particularly wrong with the food and how it was cooked here, plenty of juicy king prawns. Again, just found it a bit lacking.
My tea was cool though, a glass mug with a bundle of tea leaves that opens up showing a flower after you add boiling water. I did eat a few of the leaves accidentally though.
Laura’s desert look appetising, a chocolate truffle slab and last time she exclaimed the sorbet was fantastic — wished I’d plumped for the desert over my prawn filled rubbery starters.
The servers were very polite but tended to get tunnel vision and didn’t notice you til you jump in front of them. But saying that in the time we were there a lot of them were taking a seat behind us and chowing down on their own food. I can imagine a lot of the grand central restaurants don’t have staff rooms or offices so where else are they supposed to go?
I’m afraid I won’t be going back any time soon, there are just other places that you drop nearly £20 or less on food and at least have a memorable taste.

I have experienced better but I still enjoyed the experience. I have been twice now, the first time my starter of rolls that resembled condoms with vegetables in was okay and the main of noodles and vegetables was.meh. The only thing I enjoyed was the sorbet but it was sooooo good. It kinda made up for the other courses. The second visit was better. I had the noodle soup with tofu and it was flavoursome and really filling. My second choice of dessert was choc slab and green tea ice cream and it was lovely.
So maybe this is THE restaurant for yummy desserts but mediocre mains?
Service wasn’t the best either but not completely terrible. Mainly due to a really hot guy who works there.

I went along to try the food at Phở after hearing good things from others. It turned out to be a bit disappointing.
Part of my starter (spring rolls) was burnt so that was wasted. The main was spicy, and had lots of texture from the prawns, and the vegetables (I ordered the broken rice), but aside from that was lacking any real flavours for me to enjoy.
Also, the service was lack lustre. There was one server who was helpful, friendly, and enthusiastic. The other server was bored, couldn’t be bothered to clear our plates despite seeing them as he sauntered past, and made zero eye contact with me or my fellow diner over the 90 minutes we dined there.
I’ll give it another chance some time but for now, this experience has not inspired me to rush back.