Pho Dai Loi 2

I would give it 3 ½ star if I would. Like their phở broth it’s just right. I want to go there, even though my way was passed by phở Bac. Bun bo hue was good too, but the customers service needed to be improve. There seems more workers there then Phở Bac but none of them can really come get your order. Every we went we need to call them come over get us water or meals, or whatever we needed. If they could change the way their service, here will be my frequent or favorite spot.

Phở Dai Loi 2 has saved my life at least four times. This place has THE BEST phở that I have ever had — and there is just something about phở that brings you back from the edge (especially when you’re hungover).
In terms of appetizers, you can’t go wrong with the fresh spring rolls. They’re stuffed with several entire shrimp to each roll. The peanut dipping sauce is sweet and just the right consistency to coat your spring roll without overpowering it.
For mains, I’ve had most iterations of the phở («noodle soup»). The right meat choice for you is going to vary depending on your comfort level with various cuts of beef, but if you’re new to the game just start with #13 (Phở Tai) and work your way up. Everything is high-​quality so no need for concern if you’re not sure about trying tripe in soup.
The Bo Kho is also an interesting dish. It’s described as a French-​style beef stew, and I’d say that’s pretty accurate (except for the addition of rice noodles, obviously). The broth has more of a red tint to it than the clear-​looking phở broth does, and a significantly different flavor. It’s served with crusty French bread, perfect for dipping.
In general, the soups come in different sizes and the servers will also drop off a plate of fresh herbs, bean sprouts, lime wedges, etc. If you like your soup spicy, there is sriracha as well as a housemade hot chili garlic sauce already on your table.
If you’re not looking for soup, I would also recommend any of the noodle dishes. (To be perfectly honest I come here for soup but I will also occasionally go out of my way to order a vermicelli dish to go for leftovers.) In particular I like the Vermicelli with
Phở Dai Loi also offers delicious smoothies and bubble tea. I recommend the avocado flavor. It’s strange but has a great creamy texture, like what you’d expect from bananas.
A few notes:
— Phở is not meant for take-​out. You’ll risk ruining it if you don’t enjoy it here.
— When you’re done take the ticket stub up to the cashier’s desk and they’ll take care of you.

Always the best Phở in Atlanta! They have raised their prices I noticed since last year, but still a value.

Not a best place if you are Vegeterian. I am scoring 3 was disappointed with food. I decided to try this place based on good comments and number of reviews but I wish they tweak there menu to provide Vegeterian options like many good Vietnamese restaurant in Atlanta.

Hands down the best place to get Phở in ATL! I have tried my fair share of phở houses and will definitely put my finger on Dai Loi as the best of the best. I came in with a few friends on a casual Monday for dinner. Sometimes, a hearty soupy meal is just the right thing to get you started for the week. I generally always get their P3 phở, which included all their choices of meat. But today, I decided to go with something a little different. If you are someone who always orders Phở and is not afraid to go out of your comfort zone a little bit, I suggest ordering a bowl of Bun Bo Hue.
Bun Bo Hue is a little different from your regular bowl of Phở in that this noodle dish is spicy, thus having red colored broth. The noodles are thick and round rice vermicelli. The meats include beef brisket, pig blood curd, pig feet and leg, pork balls and others. It of course also comes with your regular veggies, such as cilantro, basil, and bean sprouts.
I know, the meats can sound a little off putting! But if you can get over it, I definitely push for you to try this. The noodle soup is just packed with sooooo much flavor! Take the pig blood out for all I care, just try Bön Bo Hue for its broth and noodles. You will not regret it!
Anyway, order any Phở or noodle dish at Dai Loi and you will not walk out disappointed. Add a little bit of sriracha and fish sauce to taste, and your noodles will be perfect!
Just a finishing note, although I do think Dai Loi makes the best NOODLE dish. I do not think they make the best rice dish. The rice dish is good, but just not as great as some other restaurants. A little more expensive and a little less food; mostly just rice. So, if you’re looking for the best noodles, come to Dai Loi!

True phở for the true phở lover!

We love this place!
We’ve been coming here for about 3 years now… it was about time I reviewed it!
I can’t comment much on the whole menu, as I ALWAYS order a #13. Phở with top round, extra limes and extra jalapenos.
This is the place to go in the winter, when nursing a cold, or why not, a hangover too.
Services is basic but great, food is delicious, and you can’t beat the price!

Looking for a kick ass, authentic and inexpensive phở spot that also doubles as an excellent place to get in a fistfight with my cousin Jay? Then this place is a must for all Atlanta residents.
The bowls of phở are big, piping hot and downright delicious, and will provide you with the necessary sustenance to engage in a rage-​filled brawl where all of your childhood insecurities come to a head against my cousin Jay. Strangers will cower in fear as you stealthy deliver punch after punch to my cousin Jay’s smug face after he dared to make a disparaging remark about your hot pants.
«These are good hot pants,» you’ll tell my cousin Jay right before throwing him over a bench, causing him to burn his genitals on a sizzling plate of Vermicelli.
The staff is also extremely friendly and prompt, and will almost immediately bring my cousin Jay a bag of frozen peas to keep the swelling down on his busted eye. Some staff members will even sweep up his teeth in a neat little pile for him to collect following his visit to the ER.
There are probably a few other phở places in this Vietnamese enclave that are serviceable, but I’m quite certain none compare to this establishment. If you too are in need of delicious phở, which is probably the best I’ve ever had, and are looking to settle a festering beef with my cousin Jay, then you gotta roll over here, ASAP. Just make sure to book an appointment with my cousin Jay, because I’m fairly certain thousands of people in the area want to devour phở and gouge out his eyes.

Had phở here couple days ago with my brother. We both loved the phở! The broth was tasty, fresh, and the meat was cooked right so it was soft. Amount of food was right not too much noodles or anything. Hadnt been back for a while but the taste still trumps over most other phở places in Atlanta. Food was quick. Boba smoothies were also quick too. The smoothies were ok.
Place was not perfectly clean though and the staff were very laid-​back they have been there forever so they talked and laughed as they please. Haha. I dont have a problem with it but i can see some people might if they want a quiet cozy place to take their significant others to.
Price was ok. Similar to other phở places.
I definitely will come back for phở and try other dishes out too.

We have been coming here for the past couple of years. There are a few things that have not changed during this time: 1) The boba smoothies are among the best in the city! 2) Green apple and green tea flavors seem really hard for the employees to distinguish and I have gotten the wrong smoothie several times. 3) Customer service is an unknown, but at th end of the day that’s not as important to me. 4) The phở is brought out very swiftly, is always served with fresh basil etc., and the broth is good.
The reason for only 2 stars is that they do not properly clean their shrimp. I have noticed this several times, always hoping for a better experience next time, but last night the shrimp reached a new level of diagustingness. Also, the beef in my husband’s phở looked pretty yucky, too. See pictures.

The best Phở by far. Love the eclectic groupings of people. Great community seating atmosphere. The flavors in this soup are so delicately perfect and then the added meats, noodles and fresh sprouts, basil, lime and peppers (to add) make the finishing touch.

A no frills place with booth-​like and communal seating.
Very fresh tasting spring rolls and yummy peanut dipping sauce!
The phở was filling and very tasty too but it went below good eating temperature a lot faster than what we’re used to. We like to add the accompanied plate of greens and squeeze some lime juice over the bowl for extra freshness taste.
The Bun Kho was our least favorite dish. The meat was not as tender as we hoped it to be and the soup’s taste wasn’t to our preference, and so, we won’t get next time. It was also too hot to eat even after waiting awhile. It does come with a plain baguette for dipping.
Both bowls were very generous in portion but still enough for the two of us to finish eating.

Pretty yummy. The phở broth is EXCELLENT! I couldn’t stop slurping it up after my first spoonful. The fresh spring rolls didn’t taste as fresh as they should’ve… Perhaps they’re made as a large batch and remade once out? That’s the only reason for the four stars versus five. Lots of bubble tea flavors (not in the menu, but on the side of the napkin dispensers), though I will say that my Thai tea bubble tea had some but fully cooked boba and was on the sweet side.
Thick Vietnamese accents, but be patient. You’re on Buford, after all. Good phở flavors. Will definitely return when in the area.

When we visit Atlanta we can’t wait to devour some great Vietnamese food and our favorite place is actually Quoc Huong Banh Mi Fast Food but we wanted to try something different.
This place is definitely busy but they have plenty of seats. I’m not sure what the hype is all about.
We ordered:
Shrimp and Pork Spring Rolls– love the sauce but the spring roll was lacking in shrimp and pork. Very thin slice of shrimp and barely any pork.
Fried Rice with Marinated Pork– fried rice was lacking in flavor but liked the sweet taste of the pork.
Phở Combination– noodles were over cooked. I don’t like my noodles being mushy but the broth was very flavorful.
Rice with BBQ Pork Chop, Sunny side up egg, shredded Pork– was okay. Lacking in flavor.
Will probably never leave our favorite place at Quoc Huong.

Phở Dai Loi 2 apparently has a lot going for it since two coworkers have recommended the establishment, and I went with a family who has patronized the joint repeatedly. All favorable signs. So on a drizzly cool evening, the time had come to phở it up.
The restaurant is in a small strip mall called Little Saigon. The parking lot was stuffed; everyone was inside Phở Dai Loi 2. The clientele looked to be a mix of families and friends of all different ages and ethnicities. The man waiting on us perhaps wasn’t the most outgoing guy and could have been more attentive but this is a basic spot, one of those where you pay at the counter at the end.
I shared an order of the steamed pork rolls (yum, a recommended appetizer) to start before slurping into my Phở Dac Biet, the combination phở, since I couldn’t decide which meats I wanted. This one has it all, sans meatballs. The large size is just under $ 10 and was too filling for me. Wonderful comforting broth, a hearty amount of meats, including bible tripe (from the third stomach apparently, thanks Wikipedia). I’ll have to downsize to the medium next time. Yes, there will be several next times!

Late night Asian food that NYC doesn’t have? Count me in.
Phở is already amazing. How about at 2 in the morning after a night of karaōke? Even better. We stumbled in and quickly got a large table for the group. To be honest, we were very obnoxious and loud given it was a Sunday night, but we couldn’t keep ourselves contained with all the smells coming from the kitchen. I went with the classic phở tai, and a side of papaya salad.
Our food actually took a while to come out, and there was some confusion when people’s dishes got mixed up (our server wasn’t very clear which bowl was which). The food itself was pretty decent. The papaya salad was fresh and had twice as much shrimp as I was expecting (a good thing). Not the best bowl of phở I’ve ever had, but the broth passed my bar. I wasn’t used to the cuts of beef they used, and by the time I started to dig in, the meat was already too well done. They also didn’t serve the toppings right away (bean sprouts, limes, jalapeños, etc) which caused further delay.
The interior is definitely no frills, and I think they do a pretty decent job of pushing out phở from that kitchen at all hours. I’d come back for late night noms again.

How do you rate phở? What is your criteria for good better and best? Although I’m still developing my palate, I would say good phở has a tasty broth that I like, but may require a little doctoring with sauces or even salt to make it just right. A better phở, is one that is perfect just the way it is and no real requirements to add anything else. And the best phở is one that even 20 minutes after I’ve eaten it, I can still taste that lingering delicious depth of flavor.
I have been an enormous fan of I LUV PHO and Lotus Vietnamese, but not a fan of Phở Dai Loi 3. I can’t explain it, but their third location is the bottom of the barrel in terms of flavor. Hence my reluctance to coming to this, their second location. However, I have grown to love this noodle soup so much that I have added it to things I must try whenever traveling. So after getting home from a recent trip to Florida and having sampled phở at 8 different restaurants over 2 weeks, I decided it was time for me to give this location a try. After all, I have been told by many Unilocalers it is THEE best phở in the city. Well, I must say I whole-​heartedly agree!
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THE FOOD
BEEF PHO & MEATBALL PHO (5 stars) | $ 6.50 small — $ 8 medium — $ 8.75 large
On my first visit I didn’t see the meatball phở, so I ordered the beef flank and it was awesome. But I was sorely disappointed they didn’t serve meatballs. On my second visit I asked the server taking my order why did they not serve meatballs. To my surprise it was actually on the menu, it was just listed on a separate page and I didn’t see it. All is well in the universe again because my beloved phở bo vein was available and it was delicious!!! The broth here is as perfect as you could probably ever want and adding anything to it should be considered a sin punishable by a foot spanking or a really painful deep tissue massage. It was absolutely amazing just as it was.
BUN BO HUE (3.75 stars) | $ 8
Highly recommended by our new community manager Jonathan in his review, I decided to give it a try. His review stated that it was «even better than phở». So of course my food adventurous curiosity had to see if such a claim was true. I must report that for me it is not. I ordered the less spicy version and although I grew to like the overall flavor of the soup after several sips, the broth initially tasted a little suspect to me. I was expecting a spicy phở flavor but instead I received a slightly bitter and heavily ‘fishy’ flavor. It was kinda like drinking water expecting it to be a Sprite. It’s not that it has a bad flavor, just not what I was expecting.
I can’t tell you what the meats were in this dish since there was not description on the menu, but I didn’t like any of them. Everything looked and tasted weird including the one meat I did recognized, which was a fatty brisket. Another was either liver or possibly congealed pigs blood, which for me is a taste I have not yet acquired (and possibly never will). Not a fail, but will take several more taste tries to possibly get my taste buds conditioned for the unusual flavor. I will say that I switched back to the phở after eating ¹⁄₃^rd of the Bun Bo Hue. It made me appreciate their phở broth all the more!
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SERVICE
I’ve never had service this lightning fast before. On both visits, my bowl of phở was steaming in front of me before I could even type a comment into my Unilocal check-​in screen… and that is not an exaggeration.
I honestly am still somewhat in disbelief that is was so fast and it’s been two days since my second visit. You are given a ticket stub to which you use to go pay your bill once you are finished. The clean up crew seems to activate like automated robots when you leave your table and it is ready for the next customer before you have finished paying at the registers. I’ve never seen anything like this although I LUV PHO comes marginally close. IF every restaurant performed with this sort of speed and well-​oiled precision at such a reasonable cost, I doubt if I would ever try to cook anything myself!
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FINAL THOUGHTS
Okay, I concede. This is indeed the best phở I’ve tasted in the Atlanta area. Not only the best phở, also the fastest and most efficient service of any restaurant probably on this planet! However, I LUV PHO and Lotus Vietnamese in Duluth, GA still round out my top three for the metro area! To phở lovers who read this review but live outside of Georgia, know this: THIS IS a destination restaurant. If you are coming to Atlanta for ANY reason, do not miss this place!!!
²⁰¹⁶⁄₁₃

Little old Asian ladies everywhere!!! This place is LEGIT!
Seriously, nothing but little Asian ladies bustling about with huge bowls of phở and plates of food. And boba, I love boba tea.
We had the #5, very delicious. The soup wasn’t greasy like this one place down the street from it, and the meat wasn’t tough. I also got the #46, which are marinated beef chunks with rice and it was very tasty and the beef was tender.
They didn’t rush us, even though we were slightly camping with our friends, and were quick and efficient with our dishes. It’s nothing fancy, but when you are craving a good bowl of phở, I highly recommend.

Awesome place!
Service is super fast here. Too fast that I was really worried about the quality but I was super satisfied with all the food I ordered
Bo luc lac– I wouldn’t say this is a traditional style Bo luc lac but it was different and tasted great. The rice was of a fried rice flavor with no veggies just egg. The meat was on the sweeter side and lots of flavor.
Bun Bo hue– pretty damn spicy, but just make sure you stir the soup up so you don’t get all the pepper flakes floating at the top. The broth was good, and noodles cooked perfectly. The meat tasted a little over cooked.
Spring rolls– big rolls with lots of lettace. One order comes with two rolls
Viet coffee– very sweet
Coconut water– they only give you two slices of coconut meat on top. :/​
I think I’ve found my go to spot for viet food.

Jonathan T’s Guide To Determining Legit Vietnamese Joints
*****
Every week, a friend or acquaintance will ask me, via text, Facebook, or Unilocal,about my favorite, traditional Vietnamese eateries and what I should order at each respective one. And often times, I’ll provide him or her with a thorough reply. (I love that my people’s food is growing in popularity.)
But lately, life’s been hella crazy, and I haven’t had time to reply back to all of these inquiries. Thus, I’ve decided to write a review that incorporates all of the essential factors I look for in a Viet restaurant, and Phở Dai Loi #2 has practically all of them.
*****
CRITERIA I: ELDERLY VIETNAMESE PEOPLE
Upon walking in, scan the room for large groups of Vietnamese grandpas and grandmas. It’s even better if they’re loudly slurpin’ up on soups or yelling at their significant others or grandchildren. They don’t care about making a scene. They’re there for the food! And if it’s good enough to get them out of their homes, then the food must be decent. At this Phở Dai Loi location, elderly Vietnamese people roll deep, and the parking lot is flooded with Hondas, Acuras, Toyotas, and Lexuses. #IcanstereotypecauseImViet
On the flip-​side, if you don’t see elderly Vietnamese patrons, then take that as a mediocre-​food-​might-​be-​heading-​your-​way warning sign.
CRITERIA II: THE LITTLE BOY PLAYING POKEMON ON HIS MOM’S IPHONE
You might think it’s ridiculous, but every great Vietnamese restaurant I’ve eaten at (in the US) has had some child playing Pokemon on an iPhone. I don’t know if a correlation truly exists, but like the phrase, «where there’s smoke, there’s fire» a similar metaphor can be made: «where there’s a little boy playing Pokemon on an iPhone, there’s great Vietnamese food.»
CRITERIA III: INCREDIBLIY FAST SERVICE
Did your server deliver your steaming bowl of phở faster than the time it took for you to walk to the bathroom and take a leak? Do they clear dishes at lightening speed? YAS TO ALL OF THIS.
CRITERIA IV: MIRROR + CLOCK COMBO IN THE SHAPE OF VIETNAM
Vietnamese refugees miss their home country, so ridiculous Vietnamese décor pieces, like these mirror clocks, were made in the late 80s. If a Viet restaurant has one, then it’s possibly a sign that they’ve been around for a long time. And if they’ve been around for a long time, it probably means great food.
CRITERIA V: PARIS BY NIGHT POSTER ON THE FRONT DOOR
Paris By Night is this corny, monthly entertainment show that’s sold on DVD and bought by Viet communities all over the world. To advertise their show, they have women from episodes pose on their posters. These posters can be found at Viet restaurant entrances. Also a good sign. Don’t watch Paris By Night and their lip-​singing, though. #trulyawfulentertainment
CRITERIA VI: SOUPS HAVE DEPTHS OF FLAVOR IN THEIR BROTHS
*Phở Dac Biet: Broth actually taste like it’s simmered longer than six hours, and it’s passable for a restaurant. (I haven’t said that in a very long time, so it’s a compliment.) The other meat fixings in the phở and condiments are pretty standard.
*Bun Bo Hue: Even better than the phở! The bun bo hue there rocks. Why? The pork broth has the right smell and saltiness to it. Love this dish.
CRITERIA VII: SOLID APPETIZERS & DRINKS
*Spring Rolls: Way too heavy on the lettuce and could use some herbs, but I dig the morsels of shrimp and slices of pork. Their peanut sauce rocks, too.
*Egg Rolls: Just A-​OK. Needs shrimp and more bean thread.
**Café Sua Da: Strong and sweet. Pretty good.
OVERALL: I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things, but I hope you find this list helpful. And if you just scrolled to the bottom of this review, know that Phở Dai Loi 2 serves as the best overall Viet joint I’ve been to in the ATL. At least for now.