Saigon Cuisine PE — Restaurant in Charlottetown

The moment you walk in, you're welcomed with cute art that exemplifies Vietnamese culture. From the Xe Banh Mi painting, to the Vietnamese words on the wall.

The restaurant's seating arrangements were well spaced and everything was extremely clean. The wonderful aroma of star anise (pho) was floating in the air.

My partner and I ordered three things off the menu: ginger beef, pho tai (pho with rare beef), and bun bo hue (hue style spicy noodle soup).

The ginger beef was absolutely phenomenal. Sweet, with a hint of ginger. Not too overwhelming, and sauced just enough to give flavour to the onions and peppers that the beef was cooked with.

The pho broth had a wonderful taste. Not too bland (unlike some of the other pho restaurants on the East Coast), but not too overwhelming with star anise (licorice) flavouring either. You can tell that the chef had made pho many times in their lifetime. The pho only comes with a little dipping sauce bowl containing hoisin and Sriracha. Not what I'm used to (I'm used to bean sprouts, herbs, limes, etc), but it doesn't really matter, as the broth was well worth just eating plain.

The bun bo hue was also very flavourful and full of meat! The soup base was not too spicy, and had the soft lemongrass taste. Again, not too overwhelming, but not bland either.

The family that runs the restaurant was also extremely friendly. They were very quick with taking orders, filling water, etc, and they also shared their stories of coming over to Canada!

I will definitely come eat here again the next time I'm on the island. Thanks for a great experience, Saigon Bistro!

IG:...

A couple of days ago, we had dinner at this restaurant. This owner adjusts his morale based on the tip you leave. Despite this restaurant's disingenuous claim that tipping is optional, the owner shouts at anyone who leaves no tip or a tip below his law--his expectations. Here, as I read some reviews from other customers who visited here, leaving 0 and 8% tips is treated the same way-- you will be met with extreme rudeness and shouting, as if you refused to pay for your meal. I left 8% and I got his extremely rude complaints and yelled while I was in the middle of praising his food as delicious. All of this shows clearly that the owner neither cares about his store nor cares about customers' feelings of his food. He shows no respect or gratitude for his customers. The only thing he really cares about is how to get more money from us! I don't think tipping is a part of Vietnamese culture, so I don't understand the owner's obsessive and extreme reaction to tips. If he can quickly adopt and value tipping so highly, then why hasn't he also adopted to Respect others and be Kind? In conclusion, do not go to...

Also to the other reviews that say "we had to write down our order ourselves," have you never been to a Vietnamese restaurant before? They all work like that, the server taking your order is something that doesn't happen in Vietnamese restaurants.

REVIEW: Really friendly owner, he even speaks Cantonese. It's always a happy time to meet someone who is multilingual in Cantonese and Vietnamese, since I feel like we're so rare nowadays, we had a good chat and he told me how he learned the language despite not growing up in it.

The food was also fairly good, there were bean sprouts and basil leaves given (no limes) on the side for the Pho Dac Biet.

However, if I'm comparing the other 2 pho places I've been to so far on PEI, this one is the best, but nothing compares to what I can find back...