I drove pass this restaurant several times and didn’t think much of it. My wife and I walked around the area last weekend and I was drawn to the place because I saw the arcade machine sitting in the corner. We weren’t expecting much from this restaurant when entering it thinking that it’s another run of the mill “Vietnamese cuisine”. In the last five years, Edmonton has seen a surge in Vietnamese cuisine restaurants that made claims of being the best. I tried a lot of them and was disappointed by their failure to deliver on quality, taste, and value – Pho Boy is NOT one of these failures. I ordered the “Pho Boy Dragon Special” (gluten free) while my wife ordered the “Pho You - Build Your Own Pho” (gluten free); these are the highlights we got from our experience: Quality The Vietnamese restaurants in Edmonton typically give you a large heaping of pho while skimming on the meat and vegetables. This was not the case in Pho Boy. Despite the both of us ordering jumbo size bowls ($15 for the Dragon bowl and $13 for the Build Your Own), the portions of meat and noodles were well balanced. The meat flanks in both our dishes were fresh, tender, and well marinated – I had experiences where the meat given in a pho bowl becomes chewy after you submerse it in the broth, indicating that the meat is not fresh or is from frozen – this definitely was not the case. The Dragon meatball in my dish was made on site and is a highlight of my dish. The various ingredients and spices were easily distinguished when you bite into it and this in itself is worth coming back for more. The crowning jewel in our bowls, however, were the beef tendon chunks – it was so soft (almost gelatinous) and flavorful from its absorbing the broth that it practically melted in our mouths when we chewed on them. The other restaurants, too, have done beef tendon properly, but not to this caliber. Taste Overall, the dishes we ordered were very tasty – but this is a reflection in the quality of the ingredients used in the food – the Dragon meatball and the beef tendon are obviously the highlight of the dishes, but the beef broth itself was done so it is not overwhelming salty that you need to wash the soup down with pitchers of water afterwards. The broth is there to enhance and tie together the taste of the pho, meat and vegetables - it is not meant to be the star of the dish like many other restaurants do with their offerings. My wife is very averse to anything too salty and this soup definitely got her approval – in my mind, the taste in our bowls really sets Pho Boy apart. Value The amount of food we each had in our bowls was about one liter’s worth of contents for $13 and $15 (before GST), respectively – that's a lot of food when it comes to eating out. Aside from the pho, meat, and broth, there were also chicken bits, cilantro, and bean sprouts that accented our meals. While this is a common offering in the Vietnamese restaurants, the sheer amount, taste, and quality in the food makes this a worthwhile expenditure – and then there’s the service. One of the owners (Christina) made an effort to approach the customers to ask them about their experience and food while we were there. Edmonton has a reputation for not having the best customer service as a whole, but I’m glad Pho Boy is also an outlier in this regard. If you have an urge to eat out and feel like having pho, you need to go to Pho Boy.