Pho Oanh Vietnamese Noodle Soup

Delicious sandwiches! Staff was quiet but friendly, definitely has a family-​owned feel to the place. It took a bit for them to my make sandwiches but it was well worth the wait! Everything was super fresh and warm when they handed it to me. The bread was crusty and yummy and the grilled pork was also excellent. I will for sure be coming back for seconds!

Went for the Bahn Mi and was not disappointed.
Do not expect stellar service. This is a family run Vietnamese restaurant so expect bland service and family kids around. It’s just the nature of the beast. Surroundings were spartan but clean. I have had worse service at other such restaurants in Asian areas across the country.
I’ve been searching for good Bahn Mi that’s close by and this is it for me especially since it’s too hot to sit outdoors at Lulu B’s and Me So Hungry has gone down hill. North Lamar is just too far for this South Austin dude.
The best part was the bread, crunchy, moist, light and fresh. it seemed to be very much maid on site. Still had a bit of flour on it. The grilled pork was fresh and well marinated, the veggies were fresh, the mayo was flavorful and the price was right at 4.95. All the right elements for good Bahn Mi. My only complaint would be that it was too big. A little smaller on the baguette or a little more on the filling would be perfect. I left well satisfied.
Don’t order the Spring Roll. A single over sized Sping Roll for 1.50 would be great but it went over the top on the rice noodles. Cut the noodles in half and it would be fine. Peanut sauce was bland.
I’ll be back to try the Bun but the Bahn Mi has me hooked. Recent trips to Hai Ky have been unimpressive since they seem to be precooking the rice noodles and meat in their Bun so it seems stale and dry.
Thank goodness I’ve found Bahn Mi with good bread.

I probably should have read the reviews first…
It wasn’t awful. The food was okay. I got the steak/​brisket phở, and while it didn’t overwhelm me, it was still tasty and filling.
What was underwhelming, however, is the service and … décor? The gentleman who waited on me seemed pretty uninterested in being there, and I kind of felt like I was in a spare room they’d thrown some tables in. I’ve worked in call centers that had better décor.
If you don’t care that they don’t care, they food is good enough to fill the hole hunger makes. If you’re looking for an experience… yeah, this aint it.

I love dives. This is one. Had a delicious grilled chicken Banh Mi (~5.00) and some vietnamese eggrolls.
The service is not so hot. Drinks. Order. Food. Pay. Bye. Probably because the English isn’t very good at all and they’re not really there to coddle your attention whoring American asses.
Menu complainers: uh, it’s Vietnamese food. Do you really need the menu?
Sweeties. If you want Michelin service, stay out of high crime area mall restaurants on the East Side and stick to your hipster trailers or run down to Hai Ky a block west, which I think is rather bland.
Guess what. Banh Mi is not actually on the menu! They got one sign taped up by the register.
I’m not saying it’s the best nor that it’s my favorite. Certainly the bread could have been crispier and toastier. I have old teeth so this suited me fine. Yummy eggrolls.

I would say that I just ate at Phở Oanh, but I really only had a few bites of the seafood phở before some primordial instinct told me to stop eating or face a long slow death via food poisoning. The shrimp tasted… metalic, dirty, weird and alien. I chewed 3 times before my jaw locked and told me to spit out the alien invader in my mouth immediately.
Service? Almost non existent. It was noon on a Wednesday and myself and my friend were the only customers. The waitress and cook noisily slurped their own lunch from 20 feet across the deserted restaurant and ignored us for a good 10 minutes. I might have sent my food back and asked for something else but I never had the chance because of feeding frenzy and accompanying slurps, crunches and moans. It was like listening some deranged vietnamese food porn at top volume while my own poison lunch sat and mocked me as it rotted in front of me next to a giant, smudged glass of watered down vietnamese coffee.
The chopsticks and plastic ware are just sitting in containers on the tables in what I’m sure must be some kind of health code violation.
Maybe they were having a bad day? I don’t care. We were the only 2 customers in there and the food was DANGEROUSLY bad. I had to walk to the counter and stand there for almost a minute while our waitress stopped stuffing her slurping face. She didn’t ask how our food was, but I felt obligated to warn her of the health risks of the toxic sewage they had just dished up for us.
«Your shrimp… it’s REALLY, REALLY REALLY super bad. Really Really BAD.»
«Thank you» she said.
Don’t EVER eat at this place. Just go to a bus station and slurp out of one of the toilets. You’ll be much better off.

Cheap, fast phở. Hot, soupy, veggies and meat in one dish. Good service, they have nice service. Variety of appetizers and bahnmi chicken, pork, veggies or combination. Pearl drinks I haven’t tried but also cheap and fruity variety.

This has nothing to do with the food of the restaurant. Please do not say your restaurant delivers when it doesn’t.

Austin is a very phở-​friendly city. I came here for dinner and found the food decent but not worth mentioning.

Listen. I’m reading other reviews and I see a scenario: You’re driving down Oltorf and see a Vietnamese restaurant sandwiched between a scammy loans place and a Lovely Nails, and you think «Hey Imma stop there. I bet its real classy, has a nice ambiance, and excellent service. AND I’m sure my fellow patrons will be civilized… on Oltorf… at 1am…»
And it isn’t.
And you’re unhappy.
I drive past it and think «Awww I bet that place has the best terrible hang over and/​or late night food.»
And it does.
And I am happy.
Don’t expect mind-​blowing customer service and the best Phở in town at a place so closely located to a Texaco and a pool hall. It IS good food, though. I think the service is friendly, enough. I don’t expect/​need anyone fawning over me. In a hole-​in-​the-​wall joint, just take my order and bring my food, please.
It’s open late.
It tastes GREAT after too much drink.
It’s probably not something to go out of your way for, more of a neighborhood haunt… unless you’re hungry for some Phở at 2am.

Yummy yum phở at 12:30. I got the 18 that had everything and added meatballs. Small was $ 6.50 and huge. My take home portion will be a full meal for breakfast and lunch. Spring rolls were ok. Condiments were awesome. Pearl smoothie drinks were only 2.50! Even the avacado! Service was ok. Food came out fast. My friend had some sort of sweet garlic curry and chicken on rice noodles and salad. It had a nice brown sauce. He really spiced it up with the homemade salsa. Memorable. Hit the spot.

Hands down the tastiest phở i’ve had in Austin. And this place is open late, 2am, and when the phở has been sitting all day… mmmm!!! The rest of the menu I can take it or leave it, although the sandwiches are pretty decent.
Little to no wait time as well which is nice when you want to eat and run.
I see some people leave bad reviews of the service here, which if you’re looking to be shmoozed… don’t bother. This place is ran by a Vietnamese family and they are not concerned with chit chattting. They DO however, serve an amazing bowl of phở.

A lot of varying reviews — from horrible to fantastic. I am judging this place based on low expectations which is why it gets 4 stars.
Phở is phở — you really cant mess it up. Is it the best in Austin? No. Is it substantially worse than the best in Austin? No.
It is what it is. Quick food that tastes great on a cold day (like yesterday at 1:30am when it was 30 degrees outside — March 21)
I only eat phở when it’s cold — so i generally always enjoy it.
I can tell you this — Phở Oanh is pretty much the only place that is open very late. In my book — that trumps not being the best in taste.

Not very good Vietnamese food. I ordered a salad with chicken on it and the chicken was nothing but gristle and there was a pool of oil at the bottom of the bowl. Pretty gross. The serving sizes are pretty huge, but I could only eat half because it was icky. My friend got some broccoli beef with noodles and seemed disappointed as well.

A friend who lives on ²⁄₁ 2 street took me here, and the phở with braised tofu I believe w/​fish sauce, and the fried rice and the veggie spring rolls were REALLY good, The service not so much, no smiles and it’s really no frills in this place
^_​^

Very nasty Phở. Health Department needs to shut them down.

Of Austin’s offering of Vietnamese sandwiches I’d have to say that Phở Oanh is on the bottom tier. Maybe I shouldn’t be judging a phở place on their sandwiches rather than their soups, but then they shouldn’t charge $ 3.95 for a mediocre sandwich.
The bread for the sandwich is a traditional french roll that was well toasted. I got the pork sandwich and the portions of pork were decent although they slice the chili and mix it with the meat rather than just placing slices, so pretty spicy. The portion of pickled carrot/​daikon was minimal making the sandwich taste more like a regular sandwich rather than a banh mi. What they lack in pickled vegetables they compensated with mayo, unevenly dispersed mayo at that. So a few glob bites were had.
I haven’t tried their other dishes. My bf says that they can be overly spicy which I detected in my sandwich. Also the service is pretty standard Vietnamese joint, they don’t fake the enjoyment of servicing you. If you need help, ask.
Probably a decent spicy pork sandwich but a poor attempt at a pork Vietnamese sandwich. If you have the gas, then venture to the land (North/​Central Austin) of cheaper and more delicious sandwiches.

Trying to branch out, my friend Brandy and I decide to give Phở Oanh a try. The second we enter, the lady with the menus give us a WTF look, like doubting why we’re in there. We should have listened to her face.
She sits us at our table and gets us waters and our menus before she dissapears behind a wall with a huge see-​thu mirror. As we wait to order, there’s a lady arguing with the cashier about the change she just got. Brandy and I look at each other in akwardness when it happens… someone behind the wall where the lady dissapeared has some kind of phlem problem, trying to hock out a massive loogie[sic]. We look at each other in disbelief when it happens again! It’s the worst feeling when you go eat somewhere and the people behind the scenes are trying to expell mucous deposits in their throats. Now repeat that 5 – 6 times, that’s how many times we heard someone trying to expel a mass of mucous, or a lung.
Just as we were gonna walk out in disgust, the cashier that was arguing with the previous person comes up to us to take our order. We paniced so we ordered our food instead of walking out. I had the #36 chicken w/​vegiies dish and Brandy had the fried rice. I thought I was gonna get a stirfry, but instead I get my chicken and veggies in this thick brothlike brown sauce that kinda looks like phlegm. Call me stupid for staying and keep eating, but I’m too nice sometimes and wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Brandy bites into her rice only to discover that the shrimp in her rice still have the tails on them. It’s ok if the shrimp you’re eating with your fingers still have the tails, but she practically had to fish them out of the rice to get the tails off.
All in all, we won’t be going back to this place. The food was 3 stars, but the overall experience was –2, so it evens out to a 1 star. I hope whoever was trying to get rid of that loogie gets some medical attention, it sounded horrible.

My housemate, husband and I eat here often. For me it is for a couple of main reasons. It is cheap, it is close to my apartment, it is open until 1am and they put crack in the food making you crave it often. The egg rolls are not as greasy as a lot of places I’ve been to (Din Ho I’m looking at you), the iced coffee is delicious, the B4 (Beef Vermicelli) is really good. My husband and roomie are huge fans of the pearl drinks which is another reason we are there often. The service is pretty bad though. The staff are often out the back watching the pack of children that roam the restaurant or sitting at a table playing with a laptop which is a lot more interesting than topping up your water. But if you can get past that then you should give it a shot.

Well, I became a part of Unilocal JUST so I could review this restaurant. My mom and I came here at around 3:30 in the afternoon. Yes, that is an off time for most restaurants but the service disgusted me to a point that I will not only not be returning, but i will be warning others.
There were bowls of unfinished soup left in the restaurant when we first went in, and they were there when we left. When we first went in, there was a girl of around nine laying in the chairs IN the dining room, watching a ridiculously loud and obnoxious Vietnamese children’s musical. We sat down (placed on the other side of the restaurant, which was nice) and looked at the menu. The waitress came over about 5 minutes later with our waters (which tasted like chemicals) and sighed. she acted as though it was a tedious chore to take our orders. My mother and I got an iced coffee with milk, and a bubble drink, 2 spring rolls, and we each got a vermicelli bowl, one with chicken and one with pork/​shrimp.
My coffee came sooner than expected. I agree with the other reviewer, it was a bit watery but i still drank the coffee, it was better than the water. The waitress said nothing about my mom’s drink but walked off. the spring rolls had iceberg lettuce, barely any noodles, and was skimpy with the shrimp, and the peanut sauce had no flavor. The children’s music was screaming now, I couldn’t hear anything my mom was saying, and nothing was done about it.
Our food came, along with my mother’s drink, and the only thing good about it was the flavor of the meat. the shrimp was disgusting, very overcooked, the fish sauce was watery, and the only vegetable was more iceberg lettuce.
Finally, the music stopped but the kids started screaming bloody murder and crying. The waitress was restocking the tables with forks, chopsticks, and soup spoons, she even went to the dirty tables and ignored the mess. She came to our table, while we were eating, and restocked, which is rude, what was ruder was that she didn’t smile, ask how we were doing, or even make eye contact with us. She completely ignored us.
We checked out, and I grabbed a take out menu for the name and address… just to do this.

My lunchtime dining experience here has a theme, and it is «watery».
I was amazed that the coffee for my café su da was ready to go within 30 seconds of me ordering it, and an inspection of the metal coffee filter revealed that the water had only had to drain through about half a teaspoon of grounds. Café su da is supposed to be strong! That’s why it’s tempered with half a can of sweetened condensed milk! Where’s my mid-​day pick-​me-​up?
I sampled the phở broth, which was mildly tasty and certainly inoffensive, yet predominately… watery. My main entrée was the combination chow mein, featuring mainly beef, some squid, lots of undercooked onion slices and very large pieces of broccoli in an okay brown sauce on top of a pile of unbelievably bland chow mein noodles. The secret to bland noodles is apparently failing to drain them completely after cooking, resulting in an entrée that turns into watery goopy soup when rearranged on the plate.
This isn’t a one-​time goof-​up, though — I’ve been giving this place the bi-​yearly chance (once every two years, that is) for the past 10 years, got severe food poisoning once (when they were Phở Cong Ly) and have never had a delicious meal. After sampling the watery peanut sauce that came with the spring rolls, I’ve decided to never eat there again.