Loi’s Vietnamese Restaurant

Really good Vietamese food.
Really small but worth the cramp space.
Do not bring a big group with you.
Eat with a max of 4 people.
Parking will be tough.
Order, Eat, Pay — don’t sit and talk for a long time, this ain’t that kind of place.
Keep it quick and you’ll have a great time.

The food is undeniably cheap but the service, quality of the food and cleanliness of the place is not worth coming. The chicken and beef phở broth we got were very plain and tasteless. The fried rolls we got tasted like leftovers, they were lukewarm and not crispy at all. To get to the bathroom you have to walk through the tiny kitchen to get too.
Overall, an unpleasant experience

The food, generally, is good, but the cleanliness of the restaurant sure is iffy! I usually get it to go so that I’m not really thinking about it, but while I’m in there picking the food up, I’m questioning myself if it’s safe! Oh well, haven’t been sick yet! Portions used to be bigger, but still generous & pretty inexpensive! If you’re on a budget, go & try it. Just don’t look around too carefully!

Loi’s Vietnamese restaurant is my go-​to Vietnamese food place in the sunset area. It is affordable and fast. They also take to-​go orders, and it is ready pretty fast.
Interior-​wise, it is crammed and not the cleanest. My favorite is the beef noodle soup #1 (medium size), come out to be $ 5.30 with tax. Beef is served in the soup kinda raw, so you can let it soak longer in the soup if you prefer more cooked meat. Typical soup base flavor, generous amount of basil and bean sprouts.
I have also tried the Bun rieu, but was a little disappointed. The color is very red/​orange, so I was expecting a bunch of flavors, but it was quite blend. The rice noodles was also broken into tiny short pieces. Maybe I will stick with #1 beef phở in the future.
Average hygiene, average service, slightly above average food, but really, nothing can beat the price!

Nothing much to say about this place. Great food cheap price so I’m not complaining about the not-​so-​great location :) five stars from me

I’ve been to many restaurants. This is one of the worst. You pay them money to order to go and they give you garbage. Ordered the noddle with egg rolls and add money to get one more egg roll and only received one. Now I can stay and argue with them over one egg roll or just forget about it. When I finally got home the noodles are soggy and so are the egg roll. It’s not editable. I really don’t know how one would get what they pay for in restaurants like these.
I think the problems is that the place is small and they have more customers than they can handle so they selectively pick who they choose to give good service or not.
I’ve been to many restaurants and one of the main reason why they give bad service is that they have too much customers.
Here is a tip. If you found a good restaurant/​place don’t tell people about it or else the restaurant will turn bad really quick, since they no longer value your business.
I’m surprised how long this place managed to stay open. They been around for quite a while.
Also this place is dirty. Seats and tables are sticky and the floor seemed like you could actually slip. The cleanliness of this place is questionable.

My happy little cozy place.
Sticky tables but fast service and good Vietnamese variety of dishes!
Favorites:
Bun rieu (crab paste noodle soup),
phở,
eggrolls,
spring rolls

Disgusting. I got a medium #4 and I found a disgusting dead bug in my phó. Not eating here ever again.

A quick & cheap fix for phở! The best combination for my boyfriend and I is the phos + spring rolls + cold vietnamese coffees, all for less than $ 20 for two people! Cant find anywhere else.

Good food, very cheap
Bbq beef with vermicelli and egg roll is always my favorite.
don’t expect any service here

If I could have given negative stars, trust me, I would have. This place has the worst Vietnamese food ever. I mean, I would have rather gone to Phở Kim Long in San Jose where the waitresses don’t wash their hands after they use the bathroom (see my Unilocal review) than this place. Five spice chicken was soooo tough and tasted more like soy sauce chicken.

鸡腿面粉。really hole in the wall. Good food at reasonable prices. Owners are ethnic Chinese

Bad idea that I had come here and eat. I’m super hungry and I wanna have a quick meal when I came to this place. The place is small, I got seated, I ordered. She walks away. Then suddenly, she didn’t get my order clearly, so she shouted and ask me again my order, while all the people in the restaurant look at me and too bad to say, but I need to yell my order again. I got my food. i am having a couple spoonfuls of food, then a group of 4 people came in. Funny thing is I have a spacious table for four. so she looks at my strange and literally ask me to move to other table. I stand up, holding my plate and utensils, and cup while eating, to accommodate these people, with constant apologies. I’m drying out my mouth, the small tea cup is out already, need water and go. I’m still nice, I leave good tips. but tell me do u think it deserves one star review according to what I experienced?

Cheap, efficient, satisfying.
— The place is a bit dirty, but it is expected for a hole in the wall. Seating is a bit close together, very homely.
— The food is above average for its price. The cut of meat is different from others, but it still goes well with the noodles. The noodles are cooked perfectly, not too hard, not too soft. The soup is as authentic as you can get. Doesnt taste like a blast of msg salt

I like to give small businesses a chance but the old man in place has such a bad attitude, he threw out my food after i asked him to save it. I feel sorry for the people that run the place. they just need to pack it up.
the place is filthy and everything is covered in grease.

I only came here for the second time recently with my friends. ALL my friends rave about this place and I really just didn’t get it.
literally a whole in the wall and in terms of cleanliness, it kinda isn’t. cramped up into this small place, I was ready to try Loi’s phở a second time. The first time was in high school (too many years ago) so I don’t recall anything much. you know when you’re in high school and there’s cheap food and you just don’t really care. and you probably think everything is good for less than 5 bucks! hahaha
for less than $ 5, a medium bowl of phở to fulfill your cravings! i went with the number 1 «special» and people might think… what is the special??? they top the phở off with their «special» tenderized meat!
phở special — price. on point. noodles. wow medium got me full! and broth… yum! their broth is so flavorful and not bland at all. I didn’t expect much from the meat either, but surprisingly tender and delicious. they do not skimp on any of their ingredients! my only ??! would be the meat on the side is $.50 extra which I kinda don’t get… but it’s whatever, the meat on top of the noodles come out rare and not drenched in soup already, so save your 50 cents for 15 minutes of parking meter.
service — heard its hit or miss… sometimes the owner can be an angel and sometimes you’ll just hear a lot of yelling in the background… but phở-​wise, found another spot!

If you’re the type of person who has high expectations in terms of cleanliness, service, and quality of food… this is NOT the place for you. (You have been warned.)
Loi’s is the definition of a «hole in the wall». The service is meh, the décor needs to be updated, the menus… needs to be redone, sometimes the busboy forgets to wipe down your table, and the floor needs to be swept. If you can look past all this, then you’re in luck. For starters, this place is as cheap as it can get for vietnamese food! $ 5 for a medium sized bowl of phở, $ 5 for spring rolls, $ 7-​$ 8 for a rice plate. you can’t complain.
I usually come here for the phở. The rice plates is a hit or miss. Sometimes the meat is burnt or sometimes it is a bit undercooked. Not to mention, the rice plates takes longer to make. By the time your friends finish their phở, your rice plate is still in the works. As for the phở, what is there to say? You have your rice noodles, soup, and your meat, along with a side of bean sprouts, mint, and lime.
So why the 4 stars? Despite the flaws, the food is pretty good! I’ve been coming to this restaurant for 8 years and it is pretty consistent. I wouldn’t say it is the best phở in the city, but it definitely hits the spot. You can’t beat the fact that you pay less for the amount you get. And plus, I always leave here with a full stomach.
Tip: Bring Cash.

Got Vermicelli (Bún) with BBQ Beef and egg rolls. The meat was cold as if it was sitting out for hours. Could be someone ordered it by mistake and they just kept it in the back as our food came out within 5 minutes. The egg rolls were warm though.
This was the first time I’ve had cold meat on my Bún in my lifetime so I thought I would ask kindly «is the meat supposed to be cold?». I get this ‘I can’t speak English’ answer «cold noodle» «cold yes» and this really rude man (the only man working there) comes over and screams at us (we couldn’t understand what he said). Afterwards the man would scream and throw plates REALLY HARD in the bucket behind me so the food would go on me. I didn’t know what to do so I stayed calm. The thing is, they sat us at a larger table and then a party of four came in and they asked us to move to a very small table in the back near their food bucket.
My friend didn’t eat his meat but I did. It was the worst Bún we’ve ever had. This place is really dirty too. NOT recommended. They got a low health score as well. I hope they get shut down.

We’ve walked by this place a couple of times a week on our way to the 22^nd/​Irving market, but never stopped in until yesterday. After our experience, it is unlikely that we would eat here again.
We arrived about 1145 hours and the place was packed. Luckily, someone was just leaving and we occupied the table. By 1215, the restaurant had emptied out. It looks like a mom and pop type restaurant and the pop came by to clean our table. He piled everything into a soup bowl and made kind of a mess while cleaning up. The table was sticky and the wooden chairs were not comfortable. Somehow the seat is not very wide and it pressed against the back of our thighs.
The pop took our order and seemed a little «POed». Judging by the other reviews, it is his normal character. Plastic cups of thin tea were brought out. I had an extra large bowl of Loi’s special beef phở while the other party had had some vermicelli with five spice chicken. I can’t remember the price of either item, but the total bill was about $ 14. The prices are about 10% or so less than other Vietnamese restaurants such as PPQ down the street and there are reasons why.
The soup came first and even though it is advertised as extra large, it is no bigger than a competitor’s «large». Nothing special about this soup, though their were large pieces of beef that could have been cut to bite size pieces. Phở tastes the same and the broth is so-​so. The vermicelli dish came a few minutes later and consisted of a side of vermicelli and a chopped up, whole leg chicken. It is unlike other restaurants and a knife and fork is needed to eat it. The sauce was too sweet and the chicken flavoring was unusual and not really that appetizing. Not many veggies were included.
I had my back to the kitchen, but could hear lots of yelling and the sound of loud banging and slamming of the plastic dishes. It was a man’s voice and probably that of pop. The banging and yelling was unnecessary. It is though the staff did not care that this noise might disturb the patron’s eating experience.
The restaurant is not very kempt and by the health score, I can see why. The service is very minimal and we had to ask for the check. Loi’s need to bring themselves to modernize and clean up their act and maybe they’ll get as much business as PPQ. If it involves raising prices, then let it be. The way it is now configured, I would not want to eat here again.

$ 5.20 gets you a huge, hot, steaming bowl of deliciousness.
I’ve been to a number of places in SF, in search of cheap, Seattle-​priced phở and after years of searching, I’ve finally found it. The service is efficient, and straight-​to-​the-​point, and fast. It’s not fancy or anything, but it’s tasty and quick and plentiful.
I’ve been back a few times since and I’ll be returning soon again.
Bring cash — you’ll be happy you did!