Em Oi Vietnamese Restaurant — Restaurant in Hamilton

When it comes to Viet restaurants you have basically (3) types: A. The Dive that serves good to great food, but likely won't last 2 restaurant inspections. B. The Mediocre Joint that tries to be nice, but cannot afford to hire an interior decorator or such, but relies on owners who only know shiny, brass fittings, laminated marble, and lots of mirrors. Oh, and the food is very average and often decontented due to the tough challenge that is profiting with a restaurant. It's also watered down to attract western pallette or incorporates generic, Chinese dishes. C. The Balanced (not glamorous mind you) Joints that some how manage to walk a good line with everything.

Em Oi is restuarant C... and BTW we are Vietnamese.

We are not locals, but rather found it while passing through taking our daughter to college in NY (i.e. We're from Michigan.). There are certainly good Viet restaurants all around the greater Toronto, Hamilton area, but having gotten to know the owner, we've made it a point to stop by and enjoy the good.

We've had the Bun Bo Hue, which is one of my favorite dishes so I eat it every time I try a new Viet place. I score it an 9/10. The pho is a 9/10. The bun dishes also a 9/10. The balance of carb, near, and veggie is perfect. I'm especially impressed when the bun dish arrives with warm noodles instead of the usual cold, refrigerated noodles that every other place has! The content of each dish is there. No skimping out and that is hard for a restaurant. Let's hope they can maintain that, because it is not easy to operate an authentic Viet place.

One thing we are impressed about is the balance of flavors. They're not overly salty or sweet for the western palette, which we hate. It's just right. If you're into tofu try the deep fried tofu with spicy sweet sauce and cucumber.

Oh... and finally... anybody who is familiar with Viet restaurants will know that most all of them have terrible service. It's not like they even mean to be bad, but rather... they just don't know better to teach good service. Em Oi has excellent...

I had a very bad experience last week when I ordered Uber Eat from this restaurant. I ordered a fresh roll, a Pad Thai and a duck soup. When the order came to my house, I didn't see the pad Thai There's a receipt on the food bag only showed "fresh roll" and "duck soup." However, the ubereat account charged me the price of all three items including Pad Thai.

I called the restaurant, and they said they forgot to key in the Pad Thai on my order and that's why Pad Thai was not delivered. Since I was charged with the price of all three items, they said they would contact Uber Eat for a refund. However, I never received the refund from Uber Eat. I tried to contact Uber eat from their online chat, but I was told that they would not refund me. I contacted Uber Eat another 3 times, and the refund was refused. I called the restaurant back, and the guy got very inpatient and upset about this. I understand why he got frustrated, because he said the Ubereat told him that Ubereat will refund me, but Ubereat never did that. The guy said he can refund me if I came to his store. However, I actually live quite far from this restaurant, and it doesn't worth for me to travel back to this restaurant to ask for refund. I would warn anyone to order Uber Eat from this restaurant.

Note: The food is excellent (except they put MSG in the soup...but most Asian restaurants in North America put MSG in their soup, so I can't really say it's their issue). I would give 4.5 stars for the food. I came here a few times (dine in & take out &...

Terrible customer service received today from lunch for our family of 4. I witnessed how attentive they were with other tables and checked on a regular basis but not ours. We are a table of family that were not making any fuss or asked for anything extra yet, we received absolutely no attention. We ordered two PHOs, one Bun Bo Hue, one curry chicken. Very unprofessional from the servers, they prioritized the table next to ours because they seemed to know them personally. We received everything after that table but we arrived and ordered before them. Not to mention I had to wait almost 10mins to receive my side greens for Bun Bo Hue, the soup was getting cold by the time I got them because I had to get up and went and ask for it after realizing they were not going to bring it. Again, the next table ordered the same yet their side greens were already on their table before the soup came. Then they missed one of our order because the server decided not to write down the orders and went by memory .The missed order came rushed and you could tell the quality suffered due to rushing. It was very disappointing to see that they treat their customers...