Halong Vietnamita — Restaurant in Medellín

Fairly mediocre Vietnamese food. I spent two years in Vietnam, and the food is similar. The best Vietnamese food is in the US. Of course, there are a lot of Vietnamese there, too.

I've read your response. It's kind a reasonable. I'm not going to tell you how to run a business--I worked food service for five years, and I know how tough it is, but here's something you should consider:

SE Asia has some of the worst beef in the world. Why? The cows aren't the same. They're like water buffalo, and the "beef" has the texture of springs and rubber bands. It's awful. Why don't they improve it? Well, they import beef from Australia. It appeals to customers who love beef. Vietnamese like beef, but they like fatty, tough meat. It's not for western tastes, and it's awful. Some Vietnamese restaurants in Sai Gon serve higher quality beef in the tourist centers. Yes, some go cheap and serve greasy fare. That's to save money.

Colombia has some of the best beef I've ever eaten, and it's very, very reasonably priced. Take advantage of the best of Colombia, and put that beef in you pho. Your customers will love it. Embracing a third world recipe because it's authentic is silly. You're running a restaurant not a museum. It shouldn't raise your costs much to serve higher quality food. People will love it.

Viet Nam serves a lot of lemons and basil with the broth, too. Both help enhance the taste.

Pho 2000, which seems to be going out of business, served good, cheap pho with half way decent beef though the broth was often fatty/greasy. No need to...

This Vietnamese restaurant’s menu has both Vietnamese food as well as other items such as ramen and baos. I wanted to check out Vietnamese food in Colombia so we ordered both their rare beef and chicken pho, summer rolls and imperial rolls.

Some have described this as more fusion, but I think the food I ordered was a decent attempt at being traditional with its flavor probably toned down for the local palate.

I think the best item was the summer roll with shrimp. That was perfect and delicious. My friend thought the imperial rolls were too chewy, but I liked the texture, I just thought it was too salty.

The rare beef pho flavors overall was definitely toned down. It was served with a wide rice noodles, which was slightly chewy and not over cooked. They brought out the bowl with the rare beef on top and poured in the soup in front of you. The meat was good, and bowl came with just the right amount of portion for it. It came with the usual side of bean sprouts, basil and lime. The basil that grows in this country is quite flavorful. The broth has potential for improvement. I think the flavors were all there for the broth, but just toned down, and very salty for my taste.

Overall I think this is a perfect introduction to Vietnamese for a place that doesn’t have much of it. The staff is super friendly, and the ambience is very cute. They had some other Vietnamese items that I wasn’t able to try such...

Beautiful restaurant but our experience with the staff forced us to go elsewhere. My group and I (roughly 15 people), called and emailed throughout the day to reserve a table large enough to seat us. We were told due to limited availability, we may have to split our group. That was totally fine, it’s understandable. We arrived early to our reservation excited to see that the restaurant was completely empty with ample seating! We respectfully requested 1 large table, referencing our prior conversations from that day. The wait staff was happy to accommodate our request. However, we were faced with aggressive and patronizing behavior from two of the management staff members. In the end, the tension was too high and we became extremely uncomfortable. We apologized for the inconvenience and decided to go to Idi Lico instead (highly recommend). As we walked out, a member of the staff was screaming at us at the top of her lungs. As a large group, we make it a point to communicate concisely and practice patience. However this time it was met with disappointing, child-like behavior. Would not recommend for larger groups. Give your business to Idi Lico instead for excellent service, creative dishes, and welcoming atmosphere. We happily dropped...