Pho Kim Long

Location: San Jose, CA
Cuisine type: Vietnamese, Pho
Atmosphere: austere, family friendly dining
Meal: late lunch
Overall grade: 7.42

Ben

This place is very popular, with an authentic - and a little austere - feel, and has a large Vietnamese crowd. Tables fill and are turned over pretty quickly, and the service is generally self-serve. The menu had a large variety of ingredients for Pho's. I ordered a mix of rare beef (which could have been put in a little later to be more red) and brisket. The portion was pretty generous and the soup was flavorful. It was a conventional serving (limes, sprouts, basel, with a few pepper sauces available). Overall it doesn't stand out as extraordinary, but is a reliable, tasty, and satisfying place to get a good Pho, as is evident by the large local following.

Food 8

Drinks 7

Atmosphere 8

Service 6

Value 8

Nina

Christmas season sneaked up on us - before I knew it, it was the weekend before the holidays, and we still hadn’t used the discounted tickets I had purchased for the Gilroy Gardens Holiday lights event. Since it was a case of now or never, there was no time left to change our mind, or go home to cook a quick dinner before heading to Gilroy, so we stopped at the closest place on the way from the Great Mall to the highway headed south towards Gilroy.
I was a bit of a hole in the wall, a shabby looking front window with a modest sign announcing the restaurant name. Inside, the tables were pretty small and close together, lined up against the walls and in the middle. The menu was pertty predictable too - the majority of the space was taken up by variations of pho, half of which were different combinations of beef cuts and the rest the usual chicken, seafood, tofu. Overall, there was nothing new or surprising about this place, a pretty standard pho with affordable prices and generous portions.

Food 8
Drinks 6
Atmosphere 7
Service 6
Value 9