G&T Book Cafe Inc — Restaurant in Summerside

"It seems that the 2h we were waiting for food was mostly the owner choosing how little portions to use instead of actually cooking our food. We had to wait 2h for trash food and , as a family, we didnt even eat at the same time. It is honestly an embarassement to the vietnamese community."

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Never judge a restaurant by its reviews...

We went here, seeing the 4.8 star rating and thought it was a good place with authentic vietnamese food. We were so wrong... always read 1 star reviews before going because it would have saved us money and, most importantly, precious time.

We ordered fried noodles with beef/chicken, pho, fried rice and appetizer spring rolls. Read the menu carefully because the pictures are misleading although they were taken by the owners themselves. ( for example, fried spring rolls on first page has 6 large spring rolls, in reality it’s 3 very small ones for 4.99. Size of half a finger length). You can literally buy a box of spring rolls at costco for cheap with much bigger spring rolls for less money. 4.99 for tiny spring rolls is a joke.

When trying to give a suggestion to update pictures as to not mislead the customers, he was very defensive. He would always bring up an excuse as to make it seem as if his restaurant is doing the right thing. For instance, when we received the fried noodles with beef/chicken, we noticed how the portions were significantly smaller than the ones in the menu. Also, when we discussed the size of the food to the owner, he said it was a good price for the size. We then told him that in thai express, for the same price we would get twice as much and it would take 8 times less long to make, he tried to play it off and said his food is "authentic". Even if it is authentic, it doesnt taste nearly as good and takes way too long to make. His fried rice noodles with beef are 14.50$ and in thai express, you can get a pad thai for 13.99$ It takes them 5 min to make the pad thai and it is twice as big. It took the owner 30min to make the fried noodles which were mediocre at best.

Also, when you go at a restaurant, as a family, the family should all get served at the same time so you eat together and leave together. Here, we were waiting 30min between each meal. First, we got a tiny bowl of pho, which seems that is was just costco pho bowls eated up and put in a big bowl. The pho didnt even fill up half the bowl and we even ordered the big one which is 15.99$. Second, the kids both got their fried noodles with chicken at the same time. Those were decent but a bit small for the price. The owner was very stingy with the portions of sauce. He put a tiny amount of plum and soya sauce, which costs them almost nothing. We had to ask multiple times for sauce and he would always put tiny amounts. After that, we waited almost 30min to ge the fried noodles with beef. Finally, we had to wait another 30min for fried rice which was awful might I add. The fried rice was dry and it tasted like it was made by someone who can't cook. This owner wants to save money on everything, he puts low portions, uses almost no oil,etc. It seems that the 2h we were waiting for food was mostly the owner choosing how little portions to use instead of actually cooking our food. We had to wait 2h for trash food and , as a family, we didnt even eat at the same time. It is honestly an embarassement to the vietnamese community. DONT GET MISLEAD BY THE REVIEWS AND THE...

After 5 hours of driving from NB, we were looking for a good meal and based on the overwhelming good reviews, we chose the G&T Book Cafe.

Let’s just say, this was the most random experience we’ve had at a restaurant in a long time.

It’s important to understand that the restaurant is also a cafe and a book store that sells not only books, but also random things like rulers for school, Purex to clean your clothes, a beach bag and birthday cards…. To name a few. The server even invited us to go take a look at what was offered on the shelves 10 feet from the tables!

Lying around were also an open Corn Flakes box, an empty Nerf gun packaging and the back of the convenience store section was basically the “back store” of the restaurant.

At that point we were starting to question our choice, but the very good reviews made us think that the food might be the hidden gem.

Unfortunately things didn’t get better.

The service was really really slow. My daughter got her meal (served in a saucer), ate her meal, 45 min went by and I got my meal. We were a party of five and we each ordered an appetizer or soup with a main dish. Basically, plates were coming out one at the time….

The soups were good, but not great. Spring rolls were okay, but you could see they were using frozen vegetables to make them. I ordered a fried rice with frozen vegetables that tasted really really bland. I understood later why… they ran out of soy sauce. Yes, you read correctly. A Vietnamese food restaurant running out of soy sauce. I could not believe it…

They also ran out of wonton soup. Yes, no Wonton soup at a Vietnamese restaurant.

Some soft drink choices were served at room temperature with a glass filled with ice. Cold soft drinks did not come with a glass.

An extra 1$ was charged if we included bean sprouts in our dish…. But that was not mentioned at the time of ordering, we discovered the charge later on our bill.

The kitchen was basically a residential kitchen you have at home. Not a setup fit to accommodate a lot of clients at the same time.

But the kicker for us was the soft tissue box on our table. I noticed it and thought It was random, but fitting with the rest of the place until the guest at the next table asked for napkins. Minutes later, we saw the server come back with a soft tissue box that he put on their table. The kind you get in packs of 24 at Costco. I looked at my family and we all started to laugh. We could not believe it, it was their napkins!! I don’t want to sound pretentious, but when you pay about 20$ per meal (with no alcoholic beverage), you expect a bit more.

TO THE OWNER: maybe you are struggling to find good staff to help, maybe it was simply not a good night or maybe you are having problems getting your ingredients, but I unfortunately cannot recommend your restaurant. You really really need to get yourself better organized.

Also, the restaurant/convenience store/book store/cafe concept is at best really questionable. You clearly have good intentions, but you have to find your identity. Choose one of those and...

DO NOT RECOMMEND.

We went looking at the review numbers, but regrettably were in a hurry so didn’t read any of the comments especially the low reviews. I lived in Vietnam for 3 years, frequently go back to visit, and have had Viet food in Canada in almost every province. this is the worst one yet. Really can’t figure out why there are so many positive reviews.

We ordered mostly pho and a few appetizers. Read the menu carefully because the pictures are misleading although they were taken by the owners themselves. ( for example, fried spring rolls on first page has 6 large spring rolls, in reality it’s 3 very small ones for 4.99. Size of half a finger length). When trying to give a suggestion to update pictures as to not mislead the customers, he was very defensive. he just pointed at the words 3. He said it used to be 6 but people said they were full after eating them. So they updated the quantity on the menu but purposely left the picture. Then he got into how expensive it was to make it, spring roll wrappers are too expensive and labour etc. I make them at home, and know exactly how much the ingredients cost. He said you can’t find any spring rolls for sale at that price…

We waited over an hour for pho that should only take 5min to prepare in a restaurant setting, anyone with knowledge of Vietnamese cuisine knows this. The noodles are way over cooked, and the large bowls were less than half full, the broth didn’t even cover the noodles. No herbs were provided.

Offered water but only brought enough for half of our 8 people group. We had to continually ask for the 5th, 6th, and rest. Small glasses, so when we needed more water we had to wait for him to take each glass and fill them individually.

We didn’t get our fresh rolls by the time we finished the pho, we wanted to get out of there asap and asked to not have them. There was one already made so we took it, rice paper was breaking apart, no taste, dipping sauce was sub par and grainy.

One order of seafood rice noodles was not right and came with wheat noodles. They acknowledged the mistake, offered to make another one but we didn’t want to wait any further. He first asked “oh you don’t like wheat noodles?” When we said don’t worry about it, he went back to the cash register and then tried to tell us there was no wheat in the noodles since they were “egg noodles”. What a joke.

Positives: friendly owner, nice live edge tables.

Negatives: slow food, inattentive service, defensive attitude, stingy with food/ingredients, no knowledge and experience with food preparation or service, cost cutting at every level including staff,...