Cô Ba Marrickville — Restaurant in Sydney

It was a bit of mixed feeling about my feeling in Co Ba restaurant. The good point is that they serve the food that I have been craving for so much (Bò né, Crab soup). However, they are all nothing compared to the service there. The male staffs were very helpful and supportive but the lady (seems to be the owner) is the worst. I understand she might be under a lot of pressure running business here but she had the least respect to the staffs and the diners. Firstly, she questioned and criticised the staffs for wrong bill calculations very loud and the customers had to hear about that too when eating. If there is any problems, they should solved it internally so that it wouldn't affect other people. Secondly, I forgot to bring cash and was ready to withdraw money from ATM machine when waiting for food. But before that I asked the staff at counter and he was ok for me to do bank transfer. I finished payment before the food was served and showed him the receipt and everything was fine. Later, due to the discrepancies in the money count, the shop owner was furious about staffs letting people paying their meal by using bank transfer and rudely asked him to clean the table even though customers (including us) were eating and sitting there. As we already paid, they couldn't kick me out of the restaurant. I felt VERY bad about this. Thirdly, the bill calculation is not reliable. I recommened people to double check the bill before paying. From the fight between the shop owner and the staff I knew some bills are calculated lower than actual price and staffs will be rudely criticised for that. But for me, I paid double due to an error from ebank. I knew they were double checking with money count but why they said nothing about that double bill ? After overhearing their conversation, me and my bf double checked the price again and found out about that and was asking them to return the money. Luckily the staff was helpful enough and I got my money back.

It was overall a bad experience in Co Ba restaurant. This restaurant deserves 1 star but your staffs saved you another 1 star. I hope Co Ba takes this review into consideration and do better. For me, I would not come back there anytime soon.

Edited: This is about Co Ba at Cabramatta not Co Ba at...

My honest opinion of Co Ba in Marrickville is filled with disappointment. I’ve heard so many great things about this place and decided to give it a go. First experience already started off on the wrong foot. The waitress did not understand any English at all, which made ordering very hard. I resorted to pointing at the picture to show what I’d like to order. Unfortunately my order came out incorrect, however, another lady came and asked me to please eat it because they’ve already made the food. I didn’t make a fuss and decided to eat the meal. The lady was nice, came to apologise and reassured me that the next time I come, they promise to make it correctly.

I thought to give the food another go and came back the next week. This is all where it went even further downhill. AGAIN, 2 different waitresses working here, and unable to communicate at all in English. We had to use Google translate to speak (We also saw other people who don’t speak Vietnamese having a hard time ordering).

Turns out this time, the menu has slightly changed. However, to make it easier to make my order, I point to the photo of the food I want, and you can guess, the food came out wrong. AGAIN. Due to the language barrier, I was unable to communicate what went wrong in my order. I asked someone at the counter if the food in the picture looked like the food I got to my table - she simply told me that the owner has changed the menu, and this is the way it’s meant to come out (noodles in the picture was dry noodles, mine comes out full of bland soup). I ate maybe half of it and decide to leave it unfinished because it wasn’t great. My friends also tried it, and they said the soup had no flavour, and the noodles were waxy.

I’m honestly never going to come back here again. I took my friends here to try your food and spent good money only to get the wrong food is disappointing. The only positive note is that the Bun Cha had good flavour.

Hope you can improve the consistency of your ordering and customer service! I had really high hopes of coming here...

*Updated response: hey Steven as a business owner you have been making lots of assumptions on your customers. There are countless times you weaponised your CCTV to blame on the customers. Did you also notice from the CCTV that all the issues I brought up were of true? Did you also hear from the CCTV that I said the food was bland and salty? And my emotions didn’t lie. You always tell half of the truth 🥰 reading through all the 1 star reviews, everyone knows how you’re treating the customers. Let’s count how many people are unsatisfied with your service and your food. And hey mate the food is overpriced but edible. Why should I leave it uneaten when I literally pay for it? Seriously your business needs boycotting as of the avuncular attitude. Plus, no one came to me asking for my opinion on the experience 🤮 You’re saying the lie too loud.

Tried 3 dishes here and all were either bland or extremely salty. Food served with noticeably small portions of greens. Definitely not worth the price and even if it were more affordable, the quality of the food would not deserve the hype.

Service was not good. We walked in and the staff saw us, they couldn’t even be bother to make eye contact let along direct us to the table. There was a couple walking in then walked out after waiting to get served by the staff as well. Mind you that the staff were right there fully aware that there were customers waiting.

Food took over 30mins to be served, which was long. They didn’t slice the banh xeo when served. We were super confused at the whole piece not sure whether we should bite the whole thing off or make a mess trying to cut it with chopsticks.

So many unprofessional things going on. There are many better places around serving better Viet dishes! Don’t blindly follow...