Pho Saigon Pearl

It’s sometimes said that a 3.5-star Yelp rating is the sign of a great Chinese restaurant – the sort that cares more about flavor and value for the dollar than ambience, service, or plating – but there’s no such rule for Vietnamese restaurants. And in Orange County, where Yelp Elites and social media influencers routinely hype up underwhelming restaurants in exchange for free meals or money, a 3.5 or lower Yelp rating tends to be a warning that something is seriously wrong. As of late 2025, the Irvine Spectrum Center location of Pho Saigon Pearl has a 3.1, and the Diamond Jamboree original has a 3.3. You needn’t take Yelp’s questionably crowdsourced word for it; this is about as mediocre as Vietnamese food gets near the world’s largest Vietnamese community outside Vietnam.

The closest Pho Saigon Pearl gets to “good” is its pho soup ($15 to $18), thanks to a passably strong beef broth, fine rice noodles, and slices of rare-ish beef. While not even close to what you’d find at Pho Flavor, PhoHolic, or Pho Akaushi in broth or meat quality, value for the dollar, or portion size, a bowl of this soup is enough for sustenance; note there’s little reason to order the supposedly “large” size for $1 more per bowl. Its pan-fried chicken wings ($10/7) are better than okay, too – coated in a sweet chili/fish sauce glaze and served with a light salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, pickled radish slices and cliantro, the wings have a fine sweet-sour-spice balance, and like the soup, are filling enough for the price.

Other items we’ve tried here have hit various levels of “okay” to “not good,” to the point where we typically leave too depressed by whatever we’ve eaten to write about it. Spring rolls ($8/2) tend to be inexpertly made, loosely packed with watery lettuce, vermicelli, carrots, and cold shrimp or meat, served with a peanut-hoisin dip that tastes slightly sour and spoiled. Crispy egg rolls ($9/5) are oily, small, and not particularly strong in pork or shrimp flavor; banh mi ($13) are heavy on bread and vegetables, light on meat.