J and I went to Mai’s Vietnamese Restaurant a couple of weeks ago. I was super hungry, and was really looking forward to a good bowl of pho to warm me up (it was a particular foggy day in the city). Boy, was I disappointed. J and I ordered what we normally order: a bowl of pho with flank steak and rear steak, fried egg rolls and BBQ pork rice plate.

The egg rolls came first. I took one bite and decided I didn’t like them. They tasted sour to me, in a bad way. I tried them without the fish sauce dipping sauce, and it was still sour. J thought so too. The ground pork inside didn’t taste like pork at all.
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Next came my pho. Now, I’m don’t consider myself to be a picky eater, but this pho was just not good. The flavor of the soup was off. It didn’t taste like beef bones simmered for 20 hours, instead it tasted like pho seasoning powder in water. The rear steak was cut too thick and and wasn’t cooked fully by the broth.
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J thought the BBQ pork was oddly flavored, and just wasn’t good.
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I don’t know whether our taste buds were adversely affected by the egg rolls, or some sort of seasoning was put into each of these dishes, we just didn’t like the flavor of any of them. I guess the one upside is the owner and server seemed to be really nice. If I had to give it a rating as on Yelp, I’d give it just one star for the decent service.