text: Until last night I thought I did not know the difference between good pho and bad pho Last night I ate at Ha Long Bay and discovered that actually I DO know the difference but I would never had terrible pho beforennWe stopped in for a quick bowl of pho after skiing so we were cold and hungry our standards were low We ordered pho because at every authentic pho restaurant I have ever eaten at maybe a dozen it takes about seconds for the soup to come out after ordering Not so at Ha Long Bay It took about minutes for us to get our food How is that even possible You dump some broth over the noodles throw some beef on top and its done There is no cooking involved When our pho finally appeared it was pathetic The broth was onedimensional and the meat was severely lacking I ordered which is supposed to have rare beef beef flank and beef balls It had ZERO rare beef maybe because it just sat there waiting for our waitress to decide to do her job and cooking away in the broth about little shreds of tough overdone beef and one beef ball cut into pieces My husband got the delux pho which had roughly the same amount of meat but featured the biggest most inedible piece of tripe I have ever seen Think pingpong ball sized Gross If we had not been starving and already waiting for our dinner for so long we probably would have sent the food back it was so obviously lacking nnBetween the bad service and the worse food I will never eat here again I would rather not eat pho in Madison ever again than pay another for this junk