Until last night, I thought I didn't 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'd never had terrible pho before.\n\nWe 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've ever eaten at (maybe a dozen?) it takes about 90 seconds for the soup to come out after ordering. Not so at Ha Long Bay. It took about 20 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's no cooking involved! When our pho finally appeared, it was pathetic. The broth was one-dimensional and the meat was severely lacking. I ordered #7, 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 4 little shreds of tough overdone beef, and one beef ball cut into 3 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've ever seen. Think ping-pong ball sized. Gross. If we hadn't been starving and already waiting for our dinner for so long, we probably would have sent the food back it was so obviously lacking. \n\nBetween the bad service and the worse food, I'll never eat here again. I would rather not eat pho in Madison ever again than pay another $8 for this junk.