Pho Ha Linh

Food isn’t bad at… But his attitude for no reason all day everyday is uncalled for. Very very rude and honestly phone 234 in Manassas is waaay better

The customer service is HORRIBLE. The owner was so rude to my girlfriend and I. We asked if we could be seated in a booth which they were all open and he said «no you have to sit at a table». He became very smug after that. The food was very bland compared to other Phở restaurants in Manassas which I will gladly make the drive too instead. He had such a aggressive attitude toward us the whole time. READ all the other reviews in gray they mention the same thing. AVOID this place. Hopefully the owner reads this and adjusts his attitude. Will not be returning here again.

Great customer service! Food is authentic and delicious! One of my favorite restaurants in the area :)

The restaurant was cozy and clean with a family-​friendly vibe. The phở was very flavorful, with generous portions of noodles and sides. I have been to so many other restaurants barely give you any noodles or soup or the soup is no good and way too oily.
During the summer I also tried the vermicelli noodles with shrimp. Perfect flavors with a nice charred wok taste.
You can’t go wrong with either.
This restaurant is family run and I support that. Everyone was attentive, welcoming and really prided themselves in making good home Vietnamese cooking.
If you’ve never been to a Vietnamese restaurant, Phở Ha Linh is a great place to start!
Yay! I’m a fan!

I stopped by here after a long drive from Charlottesville, VA and boy, they did not disappoint. The phở was perfect and they gave me plenty of food which was satisfying. I ordered phở with sausage and the veggies were very fresh. The services was very fast and the staff was friendly. I definitely recommend this place if you are in the area.

I hate going in on reviews, but the reviews from people that aren’t family friends with the male owner are straight telling the truth. I’ll start with the good in case some of you die-​hard phở fans don’t mind everything else and just wanna get take out: The phở is good, comparable to other chains and got a bit of everything. I only got food poisoning once (don’t get tripe at really odd hours).
The rest of the stars are for service. I don’t care what people say, if a restaurant was only judged by food they would be a takeout or delivery service. If you’re offering an establishment for a sit-​down meal, you would think that maybe, maaaybe it would make sense for customers to be taking into account the whole experience. Ya know, come for the food, come back for the food + service. You can find phở anywhere and there are plenty of first-​generation Vietnamese staff I’ve encountered who are warm, diligent, and kind, so don’t even front with the whole «it’s a cultural thing to be brusque» noise. That gives a whole group a bad and inaccurate name. Enough of my rant there. Let’s talk why the service really was bad.
If you luck out, you’ll get the female servers (the women of the family that runs the place). They’re fine! If you don’t luck out (which you often won’t, because he’s the owner and is there all the time), you’ll get the male owner «waiting» on you. I’ve never met a more sarcastic guy with the biggest «acting like the world owes him a favor» attitude in my life. Trust me. I can’t even exaggerate and I’ve worked as a waitress with terrible management before. You can be the nicest customer there, and it doesn’t matter if he knows you or you’re a complete stranger: he automatically will treat you like a nuisance and like he’s doing the community a favor preparing food that you pay money for.
Sorry this is going to be long, I just wanted to do a good job documenting every experience I had with this joint so y’all can at least read my summary of all the times here and judge for yourself if you can’t just go to a competing place. In non-​peak hours, I came in with a friend to an empty restaurant, so we asked for a booth. He said «that section was closed,» with no actual reason. OK, fine. Didn’t bother me since that’s really up to him, so we sat at a table. Not sure if the eyeroll was necessary, but this was before I knew how disgusting of a personality this man had. Took forever to get us water, slow service, and when he didn’t glance over he was busy watching TV or chilling on his computer. Didn’t know he was rude then since he maybe said a total of 8 words to us and dropped a check into my lap.
I then had the misfortune of coming here with some family out of town. Once again I am an optimist and figured he was having a bad day. Wrong. We came in for dinner and my mom (she’s 78 and has super old/​less nerves than the rest of us I guess) requested her soup be extra hot. She’s used to asking for this everywhere because she can’t feel it and likes her soup hot since the rest of her body gets cold real easily. It’s a condition or something, but I mean once again didn’t think it would be a big request. She knows that sometimes heating up food might take a while to do «properly» so she often will assure the waiter they can just have the cooks pop whatever food into the microwave and nuke it for a few and that’ll do the trick.
Nope, apparently this triggered some sort of elitist spasm in the dude. He does this dramatic pause, sighs, and says (verbatim to the best of my memory) «Well, phở isn’t really served like that, if it’s heated too much it won’t taste as good. So… no.» I’m sorry, you get to dictate what the customers want, Mr. «Invented the Only way to Eat Phở?» In the restaurant biz, if you like mustard but your customer likes ketchup, what do you do? Who is the one eating and paying for it? Taste preferences, while I’m sure may not always be the «best» way to eat something, are not «wrong», so I found that shocking that he would say that. Finally, as «incorrect» as this might have been (which I still doubt), it’s a ludicrously simple request that he could’ve just bit back his tongue and done with no tears shed. It’s not like we asked for him to serve it off a unicorn’s back with a caviar topping, so I didn’t even know what made his little mind turn and conclude that yes, this was the right response to a simple preference.
My mom is a sweet lady who’s worked 50 years in the service industry and treated him with nothing but smiles, and somehow that’s just a surefire way to scream «hate on this customer» to this man? He cut us off, haughtily brought our #1 only-​way-​to-​eat phở, with no regard for her preference. Needless to say, with her medical condition/​age she found it cold for her and we all ate in silence.
I cannot emphasize to people not to come here, not because the phở is necessarily bad, but because a human like him does not deserve your business. Maybe then he’ll realize it’s not us, it’s him.

After looking at some of the other reviews here, I guess my husband and I am not the only ones who were treated badly at this place. The guy (owner/​manager) is very rude. We were seated not even for a minute and the guy came over and rudely asked «you know what you want yet?». Umm. seriously? Is that how he talks to his customers? My husband and I have been there a few times thinking maybe he had a bad day or something but he have been consistently rude. We will not go back again. The service is terrible!!!

Visited Phở Ha Linh again and they don’t disappoint! Best Phở in town!
Service is speedy, food is great, and my belly is happy every time I visit.

Whoever this short fat guy working the hall needs to go. If owner, the place needs to go out of business to give him a rude awaking. I have never seen an Ahole calling himself as server or whatever he is. He is very rude to customers as you walk in. The place closes at 9 and when we walked in 8:35, he says to go only. Really? I have gone here few times and the a hole always treated the customers such a way. Oh I forgot, one time he smiled when he saw me playing a video game and said you played that too? What an ass.

Rude manager
Very unfriendly and unkind. His manners are terrible. Too bad because the. food is good
Needs to change his attitude

We called in an order and the person who answered was rude. Upon arrival to pick up the chicken/​vegetable phở the person who gave us the order and charged us was rude. We got home and found that the chicken was undercooked (all pink). I called to complain about the state of the meal and the person who answered was rude. The next person I spoke with told me that I’m supposed to cook it. If I wanted to cook our meal we would not have ordered it from a restaurant.
To their credit they did offer to refund my meal but I would have to drive to the restaurant for that to happen and honestly I just want to forget this restaurant exists.
From now on I’m driving to Phở Sapa in Bristow. They set the bar for Phở in this area.

Service was AWFUL! No smiles, not courteous at all.
Got sick from the food :(

I was skeptical of coming here because of customer reviews concerning quality of food and customer service. Despite my skepticism, we had a very good meal with 5 star service.
My group of 3 arrived on a Saturday around noon. There was only one other table of customers.
The female hostess was incredibly kind and attentive the entire time. We were seated immediately. The restaurant looked clean and the bathrooms were fairly clean.
The phở was served in a generous portion and hit the spot. It was not the best phở I have ever had, but was still very good. The spring rolls and peanut sauce were average at best.
They have a full bar with beer, etc. I couldn’t tell if there was liquor. Two flat screen TVs on either side of the bar.
The ticket before tip was just under $ 30. It included spring rolls, 2 adult phở (phos? phoses?), 1 kid’s phở, and 1 hot tea. We will most likely be back.

I’ve had better. The soup is too sweet. We had an issue with our meal and the owner started arguing with us. Overtime we went there it was something either with the meal or the service. Unfortunately it is the only one in the area but that doesn’t stop us from finding other places to avoid eating here. Try Phở Favor it is our go to place unless we are in Manassas, then we try Phở Saigon.

I agree with the people that say this place is rude! The owner or guy behind the bar just doesn’t care. I came here to get phở when I was sick and after 20 mins my food came out at the other side of the counter. The guy just nodded towards the food and said it was ready. A little politeness goes a long way -.-

Family favorite– especially on cold winter nights. we don’t have any previous experience with Vietnamese food to judge the selection. However, we’ve tried Phở, Bun, and my husband always gets Com Tam. We’ve never walked away unhappy.
Service is good. Beverages and appetizers arrive quickly. Entrees are brought out quickly from the kitchen. Water and other beverages are refilled promptly. We hope this restaurant flourishes.

There are not many phở places in this neck of the woods and while this is not the best of the best, it is probably some of the best that you’ll find in the Haymarket/​Gainesville area.
Soup portions are a bit small and the owner is not exactly friendly, but they get the job done in terms of service.
I really like their pork summer rolls.

My family and I have a love-​hate relationship about this place. The food is no doubt good, but the portion size is VERRRRyyyy small for a large bowl of Phở. Take out all the broth, and you will have a less-​than fist size of noodles, which is not a lot for a hungry hubby or father in law to eat. We always end up needing to ordering a more appetizers just to give us a fill. My family and I are Asians, so we know when we see a decent size portion, and this place is cheap-​o with their portion sizes!
Customer service is horrible. Is the guy lazy or what?! He’ll just point from a distance, at the table he’d want you to sit down at (rude). He also just throws (not hard) the menu on the table, instead of taking the time to politely handing the menu to each guest. Every time we go here, the lady in the kitchen (with the hair net) is the one serving our food. There is something about that is totally unappetizing. He never smiles (he looks pissed off ALL the time) and when I ask questions, I feel like I am doing a disservice to him. I really want to love this place, but they need to 1) be more generous with their servings/​portion size and 2) need to hire a new guy/​server, but that’s going to be impossible, because this restaurant is family owned, and the server is part of the family.

So every other 1 star review is correct. The owner is abrupt but you have to understand that it is his culture. I have to say I appreciated the service because i knew he was not being rude. My husband’s God father brought us here because it is his absolute favorite place.
We were visiting from out of state and this was one of the best stops for great food. When we came in he was greeted by the owner and it was not an overly friendly interaction it was actually very abrupt, acknowledging and what others would consider transactional.
The food was great. The servings are huge and so flavorful. The spice was just how i like it — hot and slobber inducing.
The wings were equally spicy however so tasty i could not put them down.
My husband had the quail appetizer and it was very juicy. For me i did not love it only because my tastebuds are not in tune with wild game meats.
I also had the shrimp won-​tons. They were amazing.
Everything came out hot (almost too hot) because this place is about business and bringing you fresh out of the kitchen delights.
If you can get over the demeanor of the owner/​server (it is just his personalty and he means no harm by it). You will be pleasantly surprised.

Customer service: would give 0 stars I could. Have never been treated so rudely at any restaurant ever!
I’ve been here several times now to give it another try. The first couple times, the customer service was already bad enough and almost ruined the dinner for our group. This time we didn’t even a chance to have our dinner here ruined, because we were turned away before closing time!
We came in at 8:30 pm Friday night, and closing time is 9:00. I get that if it’s 8:55 pm and we walk in, you’d be kind of irked. But phở is quick and our party of 2 could most likely finish our meal even before 9:00.
So we walked in and one of the bus boys greeted us nicely. He took us to the owner (I think, he’s here every time) who simply said «take-​out only» and looked the other way. No «sorry, folks», no apologetic looks, just went back to his business. Even the bus boy looked embarrassed for him (Come on, even the bus boy has better manners than you!) We stood there for a good minute wondering if he was gonna look back at us… but nope, we just turned around slowly and left… and never coming back.
Don’t know how it got a «People Like Us On Unilocal» sticker, because I would definitely recommend everyone away from here, and down the road to Phở 234.