Red Satay Main — Restaurant in Moncton

Red Satay has been my favorite restaurant for the last 5 years. Another location is always a welcomed addition considering the limited operating hours at the other locations.

The restaurant boasts an open concept, high ceiling design. The seating consists of a mix of tables and booths. There is locally made art adorning the walls, and various Vietnamese themed decor throughout. As such, it creates a very warm and welcoming atmosphere, especially with the large windows allowing a lot of natural light to enter the dining room.

The restaurant is clean, well lit and has lavatory accommodations for both sexes along with a wheelchair friendly lavatory.

We went on an uneventful monday night (28/12/2024) around 17:00, with only a few other couples at other tables. We were sat in a booth of our choice. The booths have a soft, velvelty material on them. Although the materials is nice, stains were evident and could have used a deep clean. The first thing I noticed is that the table was slightly sticky, with a sweet, unpleasant odor. I didn't bother mentioning it because it seemed trivial at the time.

The server was friendly and professional and brought us menus roughly 5 minutes after we were seated. We waited roughly 15 minutes for him to bring water and to take our order. We ordered an entree of pork spring rolls and clear rolls (not sure of actual name) along with our main courses, which we requested to all be served at the same time with our main courses.

30 minutes pass, and our entrees are served first, against our request. Another 30 minutes pass and our main courses are served. This is not a deal breaker, although I wish the server would have been more attentive to our requests.

Now onto the most important part - the food. It is identical to the other locations. Flavour wise, texture wise and everything else is the same as it's counterparts. In addition to this, they have an excellent ice making machine that makes the most perfect ice for crunching.

While the service wasn't anything spectacular, the food was as expected and as such, I will keep on visiting this location.

PS; get the...

As far as Pho goes, this is a loser. For 18.98$ before tip you can get a lacklustre beef pho in a bowl about the size of a cereal bowl for kids. Not kidding - my 11 year old would eat cheerios out of this bowl. If you’ve had a lot of pho at a lot of places, you know that a regular size is pretty darn big. This is not even close. The broth is ok at best - but I couldn’t taste the love, just the salt. That’s about it. The meat is definitely a second rate cut and it’s cut too thick. Usually it should be shaved, the pieces are more than an 1/8 inch thick. There wasn’t enough onions in the broth either. Usually onions and spring onion pieces are bountiful, adding to the flavor… Not in this case. When the bowl was brought, the meat was already fully cooked by the broth, so you couldn’t get a taste of what the broth was like before it changes with the meat flavor. But I think the meat really affects their broth flavour because there’s so little broth in the bowl versus a regular amount of meat. Shortly into eating it, the broth was fully brown. That’s not normal. Oh and there was no side of fresh basil… There was two tiny little stems of cilantro, totalling four leafs of that, but who put cilantro in PHO? Anyway, I’ve eaten a lot of PHO all over Canada and this is definitely in the bottom barrel for flavor, price, and quantity. Maybe the other stuff here is good…seems to be a popular place - but if you are visiting Moncton and popping out for some pho… Just pass right by here and get something else. Sorry for brutal review but pho is amazing done right and this just...

I won't focus much on the food quality today, but I live quite far from Moncton, and the only reason I visited this restaurant was because it used to be Vien Dong, which was a favorite of mine. Unfortunately, the food here didn't match the price, and it was significantly worse than the same dishes I had at Vien Dong, despite the prices being similar.

We arrived at the restaurant at 6:50 PM. After spending the day at Shediac beach, our family was quite hungry. We placed a group order, with some of us choosing Pho and others opting for BBQ rice dishes. We understood it would take time to prepare our meals, but it took 1.5 hours for our dishes to be served, and even then, they were brought out slowly and sporadically. The last two dishes were served around 8:20 PM, and they completely missed one of our orders, which was the same as the last two dishes served. The boy, already exhausted and hungry from our beach trip, had to wait an hour and a half for nothing at the closing time of the restaurant. When we inquired, they had forgotten the dish and only started preparing it then. We decided to cancel that order.

The experience was extremely disappointing, and we won't be returning or recommending this restaurant to anyone. As members of the community, we love supporting local businesses that bring unique cuisines and cultures to the area, but this is not the kind of experience we want to have,...