Lá Sen Vietnamese Cuisine — Restaurant in Toronto

Found this relatively new resto on online as I was roaming on Yelp and Google and quickly came w/ my gf to take advantage of the 15% off all items from the dinner & weekend specials menu.

It's in the building adjacent to the Porsche dealership. You can park in the parking garage and then ask the servers to present you a pass which you can then insert in the parking garage machine when you exit, to exempt the parking cost.

Right off the bat when we walked in, we noticed the resto was pretty big and able to sit quite a number of customers. We arrive at 7pm-ish on a Sunday and got a table right away.

We got the wine-braised beef pho hotpot for 2, fish sauce wings and viet drip coffee w/ condensed milk.

The fish sauce wings were not consistent unfortunately. Some of them were juicy, some of them were overcooked and dry. They also took quite a while to make these (I think they should put a disclaimer on the menu in brackets that this item would take ~ 20-25 mins to prepare; that way, customers know to order it quickly before looking at the rest of the menu).

The wine-braised pho hotpot is a pretty unique item and this was the first resto in the GTA I've seen serving it. It was good! They stuff quite a bit of meat variety in your pot. Love my beef ribs and big chunks of brisket. The soup was tasty (not your typical beef pho broth).

My gf and I had one gripe though. The broth was lukewarm when it arrived. The server brings it to the table with this dinky little candle burner underneath. I'm not sure if the concept was to keep the pot warm with this tiny flame but we figured that the pot would slowly bubble and boil on low simmer. We were wrong lol. We enjoyed the dish but as a feedback to the resto, I think using an actual burner or bringing the pot to the table while it's still steaming hot/bubbling would be a definite improvement.

The drip coffee was as good as the one at our current fave spot, Ngon Corner.

I'd definitely be open to coming back in the future! They have some unique and interesting items that I don't think I've seen at other restos and want to try (ex. the golden crispy chicken rice and hue supreme beef noodle soup).

Price-wise it is slightly more expensive than Ngon Corner and Pho Anh Vu so comparatively speaking, I think those would continue to be our go-to's for pho.

This resto certainly...

Great food, the meat they use in their pho is top tier. Very flavourful rare beef flanks, with a balanced variety of both fattier cuts and leaner cuts. The texture is not tough at all, and the fattier cuts basically melt in your mouth. The broth itself is very clean tasting, yet infused with flavours from hours of bone marrow slowly stewing. Amazing drinks, definitely try their Green Rice and Egg Crema coffee. They’re desserts in itself, but don’t worry their complimentary tea is super fragrant and delicious. Overall, it tasted very authentic, with fresh noodles and a good hefty amount of meat accompanying it. We shared a large both leaving us satisfyingly full.

However, their service needs improvement, they kept serving us food with no utensils. Unlike, other Vietnamese restaurants, their condiments and eating utensils are not on the table. We patiently waited seeing if they’d noticed, to be fair it was a holiday and it was packed when we first seated. Although, once the lunch crowd cleared we still received the same quality of service. I did give them a 5 star in total, because they had one particular employee with glasses that carried! After the rush was gone he had left, then the poor service started. They left out a steak and eggs dish we ordered, blaming that we had not clarified wanting to order it. Even though we mentioned multiple times, that we came here specifically for the dish, since it’s a rare dish that can’t be found in Toronto.

With that being said, do get some good warm bowls of pho and their Bahn Mi was good as well. The Steak and Eggs is not worth the price!

I hope this is useful feedback for the restaurant to improve in the future! Happy...

Ordered through doordash for delivery!

So, every Vietnamese spot that serves pho only serves it in large shareable portions. Many people can easily go through them on their own, but I personally can't and I hate that every time I order I end up with huge amounts of leftovers that don't taste good the next day. I've always wanted to be able to have a single person portion with a small side and a drink without spending so much so I'm really glad I found this place and that they serve this Build Your Own Lunch Combo which comes with one single person pho or banh mi, a single person portion of their appetizers, and a choice of drink. I got the beef pho with fresh spring roll (shrimp&pork), and the Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk. Unfortunately during delivery before I picked it up, the drink got tipped over and spilled all over my front porch and main floor of my house and kitchen counters, and I ended up losing half of the drink. thankfully doordash offered a quick resolution.

The pho itself comes with a really good amount of toppings for the meat, noodles, and veggies. The spring roll was also big and cut in half and served with peanut sauce. I was able to finish the meal without leftovers and feel satisfied. for $20, it was worth it since pho costs $18 anyways at most other places and spring rolls nowadays are like $10, and drinks $7. I hope I'll have the chance to dine in, but definitely I'll order...