Pho Thu Do Restaurant

This is pretty solid phở! Tasty broth, good spring rolls, very good fresh rolls and lots of beef in the soup. This was the first time I can remember running out of noodle before running out of beef in a long time (and I eat a lot of phở!).

Food: Amazing Vietnamese food!
The fish sauce is home made by the chef– awesome recipe.
Pork Chops and shrimp were to die for.
Marinated/​pickled veggies were delicious.
Vermicelli Pork was superb, great taste!
Adults and kids were all smiles with every dish. Definitely going back!
Salad rolls were good.
Atmosphere: clean and pleasant

Phở Thu Do is a successful and busy noodle restaurant in the heart of Chinatown. They have been a reliable ‘go-​to’ for many years as their broth and dishes are consistent and fresh.
I drop them a star for their limited menu — purely traditional Phở here, and I enjoy my soups with Quail Eggs and Vegetables; not options at Phở Thu Do.

We are always looking for good phở place, especially during winter time when all you want is a hot delicious phở with thin sliced beef in it.
My hubby took me to here two years ago when we were still bf&gf. The taste is still same and good! Their decoration is just average and the food option is not as diverse as other vietnamese place, but the they do a good job for what they offer. We ordered deep fried spring rolls, a large phở tai and a medium phở with beef balls. You have to try their spring roll, it is so crispy but not oily at all! I really want to know how they fry it, so I can do it at home. The soup base for the phở is just right, not salty not plain. Their price is fair for what they offer.
Not a place you should take ur date to, but def worth to try when u are cold or hungry or both ;-)

I had lunch here with my parents today. They love phở and their goal is to try every phở restaurant in Ottawa. They were happy with the phở at Phở Thu Do. They said it was comparable to most phở in Toronto. I’m not a huge phở fan, so I had something else, which I thought was good.
We were greeted promptly and given our menus and a complimentary pot of tea. The tea comes in a really pretty teapot. It was sort of lukewarm though, not as hot as I would have liked.
We started off with their spring rolls (4 for $ 7.25). Now I love the fact that the spring rolls are in the authentic Vietnamese style — as in the wrapper is made of rice and not wheat like Chinese and Thai spring rolls. Vietnamese style spring rolls are blistery and crackly and absolutely delicious when done properly. They are trickier to make, so most places just use the wheat-​based wrappers. Kudos to Phở Thu Do for trying, but I found their spring rolls too oily and the filling lacked the advertised shrimp and pork, it was mostly vegetables and vermicelli :(
I had the H4 Egg noodles sate soup (only comes in size medium for $ 9.99). The menu said that it comes with «shrimp, pork, fish balls and quail eggs». I did not see or taste any pork in my soup and I only got 1 quail egg. I did get 3 good sized shrimp and 3 large slices of «fish balls.» The broth was spicy and flavourful, and I loved the flavour added by the deep fried onion pieces. I got an adequate amount of egg noodles. Overall, it was good.
My parents both had phở (obviously). My mom had the #3 (medium rare and well done beef) size small ($ 7.25) and my dad had the #21 (The special: medium rare beef, well done beef, stewed beef tripe and beef tendon) size medium ($ 8.50).
They both really enjoyed their phở. They said that the broth was fragrant and the meats tasted good and were properly sliced. They said that it’s one of the more authentic tasting phos in Ottawa. I did not taste any, so I can’t comment personally, but I did see a lot of oil floating around in the broth.
Service was good. Staff were polite and food came out reasonably quick. Everything you need is on the table (extra cutlery, condiments, napkins, etc.), so they don’t really check up on you and we didn’t really need them for anything else. You write your own order on the paper they give you, then they come and pick it up. When you’re done you pay at the cash register. Pretty standard practice for most Vietnamese restaurants.
Décor is simple with some Vietnamese art on the walls.
As with most restaurants in Chinatown there is no parking lot, you just have to park on the street. Some streets are paid metre parking, but some streets are free parking (3-​hour limit regular bylaw applies). It’s all free parking on Sundays though, yay!
This place is a solid 3.5 stars in my books.

This has been my family’s favourite phở restaurant for years. I think I was four years old when we started coming here. We tried a few places in the area over the years ond none of them compare to Po thu Do! I now live in Chinatown and will only go here for phở despite the fact that I live above another two other po restaurants. It’s location has changed twice but the quality is ever the same.
Good prices and sizes.

BLAND! Too many places in Chinatown to choose from for that. We picked here as there were people inside and it looked clean. A lot of noise from construction happening above we realized once seated. Ugh, not so relaxing but lunch was quick.
Service was minimal, quiet but he was a kind, older gent.
I had H1 with pork and shrimp. (Phở) I wish there were more noodles in it but they were cooked well. The worst part was just the stock tasted like water. A no-​go for next time.

Phở Thu Do has long been our favorite Vietnamese restaurant in Ottawa. Their phở broth is consistently excellent (with nice, thinly sliced beef) and their bun (vermicelli) is flavorful and generous. They don’t have a huge selection of Vietnamese cuisine (don’t go in looking for a representative sampling of all the Vietnamese classic dishes) but what they do they always do well.

The phở here is bland, the meat stringy and tough. There were globules of beef fat floating in the broth, but unfortunately, this didn’t translate to great flavor. And unforgivably, the vietnamese coffee is weak.

The phở is delicious and the staff is super friendly. The fried spring rolls are a must. We also tried the vietnamese coffee with condensed milk (both hot and cold versions) and they were sweet and smooth.
We tried the vegetarian and beef phở– and be warned the bowls are HUGE, we both got mediums and weren’t able to finish them.

I’d give this place 2.5 really instead of 2. Food looked better than it taste. Spring rolls are lack luster. Beef is just ok.

Excellent Pad Thai, delicious Yellow Curry!
Service was fast!
Sadly though, there was just a few tables with people and the one server was running and seemed so stressed, it really impacted the experience.

This place was decent. There was nothing that bothered me about, but nothing impressed me. I’ve eaten there twice now and the phở has been pretty good. The phở broth is a tad different from what I’m used to. It tastes a little healthier, without taking away too much flavour. However I did find that they were a little cheap on the meat, they didn’t give a whole lot, but they gave enough.
The service and atmosphere is what you’d expect from any family owned asian restaurant. Although the restaurant is old looking, they at least keep it clean.
Overall, everything was just decent, but I could see myself coming here on the regular.

Not much positive to say about the meal Po Thu Do. The appetizers came out after the phở and were not appetizing. 5 soups were ordered but only 4 were delivered and no server ever came back to check on things so one diner went dinner-​less.
With a sea of other choices for phở within 100m we won’t be back.

Not authentic. Never coming back. I ordered #21 large phở dac biet… It was a very large bowl with very little meat. I’m a 90lb girl and it’s not enough food for me. The soup was very bland as well.

We have a few staple Vietnamese places we go to and I wanted to try and expand our experiences a bit so as Phở Thu Do had a lot of good reviews we decided to try it out.
While there are a lot of things I liked about it, there are a few things though that keep me from rating it higher.
FOOD
I ordered the shrimp and pork rolls with a medium rare phở soup while the missus ordered the deep fried spring rolls and the same soup.
On the plus side, both rolls were quite good. The shrimp and pork rolls had lots of lettuce and mint in them which I like and the missus said the spring rolls were really good.
On the down side, at least for the shrimp rolls, was the peanut sauce which was a bit too gelatinous. This of course can be personal taste but I prefer a peanut sauce that doesn’t have that type of consistency.
For the soup, on the plus side it smells great and the broth, while light, is good. On the downside though, I found it to be a bit heavy on the noodles and light on the other ingredients.
One thing to note as well is that the menu is small as there isn’t that many variations of soup and other items.
SERVICE
The service is good. There are lots of servers working so food is brought out and drinks replenished promptly.
The only downside was that they brought out our soups at the same time as our appetizers. (Actually, for the missus, they brought out her soup before her appetizer). So the service could use some tweaking.
OTHER
Though it was quiet when we first arrived on a Saturday night, it started to fill up quickly. It seems like it is a popular spot to go to.
While the norm in Vietnamese restaurants seems to be to give you hot tea, at Phở Thu Do they give you a jug of cold tea. I thought I would prefer hot but the cold tea was a nice change.
Parking on Somerset can be a bit limited at times though there are enough side streets that you should be able to find a spot if you are driving.
One final note is that they only accept cash and debit so no credit cards.
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While it may not have been as good as I was expecting, I don’t think you can go wrong with at least trying it out. It’s affordable with good food (especially the rolls). If Unilocal allowed it, I’d give it 3.5 stars as it is definitely ‘OK’, with a few things keeping me from being a ‘Fan’.

Ratings for this place was really high, but I found it just so-​so. This is located in the Phở Mecca of Ottawa with probably a dozen or more Phở places. Many places have similar names, so it is confusing.
The phở soup is legit oxtail soup. You can taste the beefiness of it. The ingredients were good, except I kept getting this musty taste, possibly from the noodles. Not sure if that taste is meant to be in there or not.
It’s super cheap, probably one of the best ways to get full in Ottawa.

I didn’t quite «get» phở until recently — now I’m obsessed, which is dangerous because Phở Thu Do is a 5 minute walk from my apartment.
Portions are large (I can never finish a small!) and very reasonably priced, with fast and friendly service. They’re also generous with the extra fixings.
I tend to always order the chicken and shrimp (H10) phở, but I’ve also had the beef which was lovely as well. Noodles have always been perfectly cooked. I’m guilty of putting so much sriracha and hoisin in the soup (I’m sure you’re not really supposed to, sorry!) that I couldn’t tell you how broth compares. All I know is that it tastes delicious!

One year later still the best Phở and Cha Gio (fried spring rolls) I ‘ve had thus far in Canada.

I’ll write a more in depth review of this place I suppose.
Now that the weather is getting colder I’m back onto phở. I was off it for a while, but my love for it has revived itself! Of the places I’ve retried recently, this place is by far the best.
People have been hyping up the service but it was abysmal when I went. We were seated by the door, and every time the door would open we would get a very cold and unpleasant gust of wind. We figured we wouldn’t be able to stand that so we told the server we were going to sit at another table. He nodded and went back into the kitchen. The table we went to had a bunch of leftover food all over the table and their dirty tea pots/​cups. I figured he was going to come back out and wipe it off really quickly. Never did. I wiped aside a clean spot for myself and set aside the tea pots to the edge of the table hoping he’d just take them. They were very selective about who they served quickly, a few people walked in and they pretty much stepped over eachother trying to take their orders, yet we were ignored for the most part.
After writing down my order and waiting a while, I got fed up and just flagged a server down to hand him my order, much more efficient. Our soups were brought out pretty quickly after that. And the phở is fantastic here, best in the city by a mile. The broth is so tangy and flavorful and tastes great even without anything added to it. They have the noodles done perfectly, they cook them kind of al dente so they don’t get mushy. And they don’t skimp out on the fixins, they gave me considerably more sprouts, basil and cilantro than Phở Bo Ga L.A. across the street does. My boyfriend ordered the vegetable soup and veggie spring rolls. The spring rolls were good but he barely touched his vegetable soup. I tried a little bit and it tasted a lot like fish sauce, and its supposed to be vegetarian. Then again they also have a soup with a beef broth also listed in the vegetarian section so I’m not sure if I’d trust the food here if I was vegetarian.
The prices are also reasonable, $ 8.99 for a medium which is about standard for most of the places in the area.