Quan Ngon

Quan ngon on story road in the grand century mall
phở soup taste like water. Loaded with MSG. Not clean restaurant. The lady is cheap.
Not very friendly. I would not recommend this restaurant to dine in. Not a lot’s of beef in the soup.
Lie about the sale. I spot Cock roach on the counter.

Went to Grand Century Mall for the Chao (rice porridge) when my boyfriend wasn’t feeling well.
I like that there is a wide variety of Vietnamese food at the food court. I got the Bun Bo Hue for $ 9. The bowl was pretty large but sadly it was mostly filled with the soup. Decent amount of noodles and meat. The meat here is actually really good! Super tender and it’s cut larger than other bun no hue places which I love!
The lady working there was nice, I asked for hot water and one cold one. She didn’t seem to complain or tell us we had to buy water from her. I did ask for extra lemons and she only gave me one and say that’s it…

Good oxtail phở! Worth the trip. Tender fresh beef w ho fun noodles and sprouts. Good tasty broth worth the few minutes wait.

This place is located in the Vietnamese food court at Grand Century mall. My friends and I came to eat here because they advertise a phở happy hour, which sounded amazing. Unfortunately, they weren’t doing it when we came. It’s not because we came at the wrong time or anything. The sign that hangs above the door into their kitchen clearly says «buy 1 get 1 free, happy hour 3−9pm, Mon-​Friday.» The lady working there said there was no happy hour today. My friend had actually come last month for the phở happy hour and the lady said no happy hour because it was a holiday. The reason we were given the day I went was that they weren’t doing it until the lunar new year started. What??? Don’t advertise a happy hour if you’re not going to honor it!
I still ended up getting food here anyway, even though I had a bunch of other choices at this Vietnamese food court. Although I was peeved about the false advertising, I still wanted phở. But first, we ordered an appetizer, the #1 bahn khot saigon, or the Little Saigon Rice Cake. Not sure exactly what it is but it was very tasty. They aren’t like your typical Japanese or Korean or even American rice cakes. It’s like they poured some kind of eggy batter into a mold that makes 8 little rice cakes. And there’s a little baby shrimp atop each one. The outside is crispy and the inside is like kind of chewy. It comes with a huge plate of lettuce, mint, cilantro, and pickled carrots and daikon, as well as a bowl of sauce to dip in (maybe fish sauce?). You take a piece of lettuce, but a Little Saigon rice cake on it plus all the veggies, wrap it up, dip it in the sauce, and EAT. The veggies were pretty fresh and went really well with the little rice cakes. I thought this was a yummy appetizer. I think this was $ 8.
After finishing that, I went and ordered by non-​happy hour phở. I don’t actually really eat beef phở (I prefer chicken phở or vegetarian phở), but I decided to try #6 King oxtail phở. When I was ordering it, the lady was really hard to understand — she’s got a very thick Vietnamese accent. She thought I had ordered the King oxtail hue udon, so I repeated that I wanted #6. She said it was $ 9. The menu is on the wall and the numbers are not in sequential order and there are no prices. So I have no idea if she just kind of charges whatever she feels like. But she was actually really nice to me and very smiley.
I got my phở and it was pretty good! The broth was good and the noodles were cooked to a good consistency. There wasn’t a lot of oxtail though — like maybe three small pieces. The oxtail wasn’t as tender as I had hoped — slightly on the chewy side. And there were other pieces of meat in there. I would’ve liked more oxtail and less of the other beef. I put a lot of sriracha in it, plus the sprouts and mint it came with. I ate all the noodles (that’s my favorite part of noodle soup).
So overall, I liked the rice cakes and the phở. But not the false advertising or the nonexistent prices on the menu wall.

I would never recommend you to eat here. I stopped by CUZ I saw MIEN GA. I ordered it and carefully told the CHEAP LADY IN THE PICTURE THAT I TOOK, please, I love to have steam sprouts, more lime, with chilies (ot hiem). She said :“ok”. Ten minutes I came back, sprouts not steam and the dish has only a few sprouts, and there is only one piece of lime and I have to ask her for one more, then there is no OT HIEM (Vietnamese chili). I have to ask her again for chili then she comes back with 2 chillies, she gave me ONE CHILI THEN TOOK BACK ONE. SO FREAKING CHEAP. I paid $ 9.00 for a bowl of a lot of water and a few noodles, few sprouts, … Everything is just half or quarter while the next door I saw they put all the additional stuffs like chili, pepper, garlic, … And u can get as much as u want depends on ur taste.
I get why they have only 2 stars.

I was craving bun bo hue so I just stopped by here for that. It wasn’t bad but it definitely was bun bo hue taste. I should’ve ran across the street to bun bo hue an nam. And damn the price is hella expensive for a food court noodle. Will not go here again. Each bowl was $ 8!!!

So a friend of ours who went to SJSU said this food court had bomb Viet food so we came here. Unfortunately, she didn’t tell us the exact restaurant that was good, so we just picked this one after looking through all the other restaurants in the food court. I really wanted phở and this shop seemed to be the only one that had «phở» on the menu (I’m sure other restaurants served some other noodle stuff but I don’t read Vietnamese), so we stuck with this one.
Me and my friends got the Chicken Phở here since one Unilocaler raved about it. When we got it, I was a little surprised at the noodles. They’re definitely not the phở noodles I was used to. The «phở» noodles here were wide, flat noodles. So at this point, I’m wondering if this place is even legit. At first bite, the taste wasn’t bad. I mean it tasted clean, but I knew it wasn’t because I could see all the oils on the broth. And surely enough, after a few bites, I could tell this whole bowl of phở was MSG-​laden with all the oils that will make you feel thirsty and kind of nasty afterwards. While I was eating my phở, I didn’t even want to drink/​touch the broth. Also, the chicken that was in the phở was a bit dry. I’m not sure why I got Chicken since I hate eating meat off bones. I guess it was because I saw Unilocal comment… arghh…
One thing that I didn’t really like was that water isn’t free here. When we asked for water, they said that they didn’t have any and that they only sell the drinks up front or bottled water. However, after a few minutes, the nice lady gave us small (and I mean literally SMALL) cups of water.
All in all, I’ve had better phở. If I were to come back to this food court, I wouldn’t eat here again. It’s expensive for a bowl of not-​so-​good phở, and not having free water for your patrons kind of kills it for me. It had a lot of oil in the broth compared to the phở I’m used to, and I’m a little confused about the noodles. The only good thing about this place was the nice lady working there. I was really disappointed in this place because I thought that Viet food in a Viet mall would be legit. Oh Quan Ngon, how you disappoint me.

Delicious! The only reason why this «fast food» stand gets a 3 (and not a 4) is because it was way more expensive than other Vietnamese places especially for a stand. Happy hour (half off) would have been more reasonable.
Chicken phở was clean, filling, and tasty. It comes with a plate of bean sprouts and basil. Personally, I like lots of basil ripped and mixed in, as well as dips of the oyster sauce/​siracha/​chili sauce along the way. Note the phở noodles are the thin flat white noodles and not the thin white cylindrical type you typically think of. Minimal oil. Chicken is all right. If anything, I wish they would chop it into smaller pieces because my small Asian mouth can’t quote handle.
Owner was sweet and gave us water even though she only had bottled water we didn’t want to buy.

Do me a favor and ORDER THE CHICKEN. That’s what it’s all about.
Everyone’s complaining about the banh khot and phở — that’s not what this place specializes in! Good thing I was feeling the chicken today because it was definitely a hidden gem.
I ordered the goi ga — chicken salad. It’s a shredded cabbage lightly dressed with fish sauce, laced with slivered fresh herbs and mild finely sliced onions, garnished with delicious roasted peanuts and fresh fried shallots. Please tell me that doesn’t make your mouth water!
On top of it were four large chunks of delicately seasoned steamed chicken, which was moist and most likely free-​range since it had that superior texture and taste factor. The fish sauce was also good with the chicken.
Next time I’ll try the steamed chicken with rice (hainan) or one of the soups with chicken! The vendor was so sweet and kind, I’ll be back!

The name does not match the discription at all. It is not good at all. Mistakes trying it. Should have gone to com Thien Huong.
You see picture of the food, order it, nothing like it. Bad bad…

If I had written a review right after my first experience of getting the phở here, I would have given it an enthusiastic 4 – 5 stars. However, I ventured back there today to give it another try to only be impressed by how much they give you. The flavor was lacking, the meat wasn’t as tender as I remembered, and they even skimped you on the veggies. It’s a shame when food quality goes down after a place has been opened for some time.

Horrible service. I ordered com ga xa and they never make my order because they forgot. I came and told them when is my food coming out. They questioned me when did I ordered it. After 15 mins my food came out and it wasn’t even good at all. Be careful when you order at this place

I came here twice. The first time I tried the wonton soup and it was ok. Not the best but not the worst. The second time my coworker and I couldn’t decide where to eat so we went to the food court. I ordered the bun bo hue and the only good thing I can say about is that the portion is big. The broth was plain, meat was hard and the noodles were so over cooked it was in pieces. I would not be coming back here.

I wish I could give this place a good review, because it’s super cheap and has large portions but my boyfriend and I both got food poisoning right after eating it. Just too good to be true.
They also lost our order so we waited almost 40 mins.

It sucks when you get bitten by bugs and it becomes very itchy.
Of the food kind.
Figuratively speaking.
Especially when you get heavily bitten from vacation (or as a friend likes to call it, «mealcation», because his FB photos of the trip contain nothing but food… sounds like people I know, including myself! :-o C’mon many of you are guilty of it too!) and you try to scratch your itch locally, only to feel itchier and less satisfied because the food meds didn’t quite have the desired effect.
For me the «mealcation» were the several days I spent in Orange County, namely Westminster and Garden Grove. Of the meals down there that made long lasting impressions, at least two or three were Vietnamese.
No need to go into detail, but I had what I would consider pretty earth shattering ox tail phở.
So I had to kind of brace myself that even San Jose wouldn’t have anything quite like it.
Bottom line QN ain’t bad, and you have to take into account that it’s food court fare, albeit traditional, with a hip$ter markup.
No need to go into too much detail as Randy has already covered the waterfront on this.
Had the same bowl, dubbed «king» oxtail phở. But the word king is misleading… at least for my bowl, and didn’t stroke my ego enough to make me feel like VIP. It had beef, beef meatballs that were quite sexcellent, and oxtail. The biggest disappointment was that the two oxtail pieces I have were pee wee minion sized, unlike the monster Hulks at Phở Thanh Lich Westminster (to be fare PTL was serving a Southern style oxtail phở). Tasty, but otherwise, size does matter. :-o
The noodles were good… very typical Cantonese ho fun like in texture, suggesting a Northern approach. A very light yet subtle beef bone clear broth that had good flavor, and either very low or no MSG inside.
At around $ 9 ish, the value pricepoint will be considered absolutely ghastly horrendous by A$N expats. The bowl, while overall quite satisfying if you don’t try to compare it to Westminster, or Turtle Tower for that matter in SF (which doesn’t have oxtail phở but is Northern style), doesn’t exactly fill you up all the way if you don’t finish the broth, as big as the bowl looks. Or perhaps it will fill you up in the short run, but after that you might want to stuff yourself with a pandan waffle, banh mi, or a nem nuong cuon from the broken rice plate shop (or if you’re a chicken freak, Com Ga a couple exits south on Silver Creek). Can’t help but wonder what the youngsters would prefer spending that $ 9+ on. In Hong Kong, hipsters would rather line up 3 hours for pork bone soup ramen than eat something cooked by mom and pop shops with a lot of love and care then complain that a tiny bowl of love and care costs so much… yet will down a ton of MSG and artificial chemicals because their plastic enhanced dyed blonde shorty girlfriends who like to slap their BFs in public, are complaining and want that crap (or something like that).

The best friend and I went to the food court because she was craving banh xeo and I was craving banh khot! Quan Ngon has banh khot listed as the number one item on their menu so I thought this must be legit!
The wait for the food was a little slow. Once I opened my to go box and I saw the amount of of lettuce and greens they put I was excited to eat! However the banh khot looked so plain compared to other places I’ve been to… It was crispy but tasted like I was biting into cardboard before dipping it in the fish sauce. After eating a couple of them, I just offered the rest of my to go order to my sister, and she tossed it after eating one (and this is one of our favorite Vietnamese food to snack on).
On a good note, there’s no shortage of inexpensive and good Vietnamese food in the area, so skip this!

Made the mistake of coming here.
I got the Bun Oc Rieu. The broth tasted way to crabby. There wasn’t even any oc in it. And the tomato wasn’t cooked long enough. The crab&meat ball tasted very egg-​y. In fact, I think it was just egg and crab meat mixed together. Not that good.
My boyfriend got the bun bo hue. He said there was nothing special to it. But it did look more appealing than my bun rieu.
If it wasn’t for the bogo, I wouldn’t have even tried this place.
Buy 1 get 1 free mon-​fri 3pm to 9pm

**Phở Quest Stop #46**
I was so sad when my favorite phở restaurant, Phở Ha Noi, unexpectedly closed. I had spent a few years on a personal «phở quest» to find the best phở joint in the Bay Area and Ha Noi’s combination of ginger tinged broth, flat rice noodles and minced flank steak had been such a clear winner.
With Phở Ha Noi gone, #2 favorite Phở Y1 stepped into the top spot but it’s familiar Southern style variation, while excellently prepared, didn’t quite have the unique elements to make it a true unequaled favorite.
I knew if I ever was going to find a replacement for Phở Ha Noi, it might take a few years or be a hidden gem via Unilocal and people I followed (CCN, KK, etc.)
Lo and behold, Quan Ngon was a new establishment in the legit Grand Century Mall and had received top marks for their oxtail phở. I beelined over there.
Quan Ngon is one of many vendors in the food court. Their menu consists of noodle soups including bun bo hue and phở. But u was here for their #6:
King Oxtail Phở #6 — a very large and generous bowl was ready in minutes. It’s served with typical condiments of bean sprouts, sliced green pepper and basil, but also includes a side of broth with a rare egg.
The broth was savory and satisfying. It doesn’t have any ginger but the oxtail bones give it a beefy nature. The noodles are flat rice noodles, which I love and I had two large oxtail bones with tender meat that was both succulent and juicy. I’m not positive, but Quan Ngon may be Northern based as well.
Instead of thin slices of flank or steak, the beef here reminds me slightly of the minced flank steak of Phở Ha Noi. Tendon, tripe, and large beef balls cut into thirds round out the bowl.
So how did Quan Ngon’s King Oxtail Phở rank? Was it enough to reign supreme? Would it fill the void left by Phở Ha Noi?
I really enjoyed the bowl. The oxtail meat was great and the broth is very good too, not needing hoisin or sriracha sauce like so many places. The noodles, my favorite flat rice noodles, were a touch firmer than I liked, but I still liked the use of those noodles over the typical. There’s a house XO chili sauce-​variant and adding that to dip the meat pieces was an extra plus.
Overall, Quan Ngon is easily the best oxtail phở I’ve had (compare to Phở Cong Ly or Nam Tien) and it isn’t just a gimmick ingredient to stand out. Preparation and flavor are solid. I’d still give Phở Y 1 the edge overall but I look forward to trying Quan Ngon more times and see if it’s unique phở can replace my missed Northern style phở from Phở Ha Noi.
Quan Ngon accepts cash only.
My Phở Quest Rankings: [San Jose, unless otherwise listed)
==================
1) Phở Ha Noi (CLOSED) — Winner: Best Phở (Overall and Northern Style)
2) Phở Y 1 — Winner: Best Beef Phở (Southern Style)
3) Phở Kim Long — Winner: Best Chicken Phở
4) Turtle Tower (SF) — Northern Style
5) Phở Ga Hung — Winner: Best Cay Bun Rau Muong
6) Quan Ngon — Winner: Best Oxtail Phở
7) Nha Hang Saigon Seafood — Winner: Best Hu Tieu
8) Hai Nam — Phở Ga/​Com Ga
9) Phuong Thao (Sunnyvale) — Combo Phở #12
10) Phở Wagon — Phở Dac Biet
11) Com Ga Nam An — Phở Ga
12) Phở Vy — Egg Noodles with Pork, Chicken, Beef
13) Phở Wagon (Sunnyvale) — Phở Dac Biet
14) The Sandwich Maker (Los Gatos) — Beef Phở
15) Phở Vi Hoa (Los Altos) — Phở P12
16) Phở Ga An Nam — Phở Ga
17) House of Phở — Phở Dac Biet and Bo Vien
18) Rengstorff Phở (Mountain View) — Special Satay
19) Saigon Vietnamese Restaurant (Santa Barbara) — Beef Phở
20) Phở Little Saigon (San Mateo) — Beef Phở
21) Phở Pasteur — Phở Ox Tail
22) Phở Ga Ho Han Kiem — Phở Ga Dac Biet
23) Phở 24 — House Special Phở
24) Phở Minh (Cupertino) — Phở Dac Biet
25) Beef Noodle No 1 — Phở #1
26) Phở Nam (Sunnyvale) — Phở #1
27) Dalat Restaurant — Hu Tieu Dac Biet
28) Phở Little Saigon (Sunnyvale) — Phở #1
29) Phở Nam (Sunnyvale) — Phở #1
30) Phở-​licious (Cupertino) — Filet Mignon Beef Phở
31) Yummee Sandwiches (Campbell) — Beef Phở
32) LeQuy (Campbell) — Hu Tieu
33) Com Tam Nhu Y Restaurant — Phở #29
34) Phở Blosson (Sunnyvale, CLOSED) — Beef Phở
35) Noodle Bar (Seaside) — Rare beef and meatball Phở
36) Hometown Noodle (Redwood City) — Combination Phở
37) Phở Hoa (Cupertino) — Phở
38) Phở Ngon (Mountain View, CLOSED) — Phở P1
39) Phở To Chau — (Mountain View) — Phở
40) Phở Binh Beef Noodle (Sunnyvale, CLOSED) — Beef Phở
41) Phở Hoa (Mountain View) — Phở
42) Phở Cong Ly — Phở #1 with Oxtail
43) Four Seasons Phở — Phở Dac Biet
44) Phở Lynn — Phở #1
45) Fast Wok (CLOSED) — Phở Tai
46) Nam Tien — Oxtail Phở

Great phở place and their fish cakes are super yummy !! They have happy hour Monday –Friday 3pm-​9pm — buy one soup, get one free !! The owner here personally takes great care of you and they give super fast service with reasonable prices :-)