Duc Anh Quan — Restaurant in Berlin

This large open table eating hall in the Vietnamese Center on the outskirts of Berlin is an interesting reminiscent of communist era. While I’m not sure most tourist or Berliners know that name of the center references the big shopping market hall in Hanoi. Being from the South this isn’t necessarily welcoming. The market is a mainly group of buildings with stalls selling everything from cell phone cases to clothing for cheap. There are restaurants attached of course. We randomly choose Duc Anh as it looked decent enough (our mistake). Firstly, my parents are from the South. The old generations tend to be staunch anti-communist North even after 40 years after the war. The menu had the assorted Vietnamese dishes from Pho to grilled meat with rice dish. Service right off the bat was extremely rude just as the animosity still linger between the North/South. We had some easy question about the menu and she was not only irritatingly annoyed didn’t answer the question but told us to read the menu which by the way said ‘Mixed fried Rice’ in Vietnamese. We ask what was that mix? See again irritatingly said read the ‘German’…uh we said we didn’t read German. She just stared at us blankly. At this point we should have us gotten up and left for another place.

The noodle soup dishes were awful. There were no herbs to accompany the soup…even a wedge of lime. The broth was a bland watery mess. Thankfully, we didn’t order any appetizers. The only one who made it okay was my friend who ordered the grilled pork with rice. You can’t mess that up. We quickly paid just to get the blazes out of this place as quick as possible.

Much later while wandering around Berlin we happen to walk into a little grocery store that was owned by another Southern Vietnamese and he ecstatically claimed no…no we don’t go there. LOL Well,...

The Duc Anh is located in one of the halls of the Dông Xuân Center. Similar to a Vietnamese "street market", in a hall complex in the eastern part of Berlin.

Yelp had led us here several years ago - time to finally write a contribution.

Best Pho in town - who knows? But this soup speciality is definitely good here. But this time it should be the fried glass noodles. First of all some spring rolls with dip. That's fine!

The dining room is quite big, you already notice that you are sitting in a hall. But the weather in Berlin can't keep up in every situation with the weather in southeast Asia.

They are not uniform here - the tables. Apparently some of them come outside when the weather is fine. Anyway, we found a clean table (the staff is cleaning diligently) and after a short wait the card arrived. A bit grubby - but ok, probably this is "authentic". Two beers (Hefeweizen), the mentioned dishes, for afterwards still coffee (after all Vietnam is the second largest coffee producer in the world - after Brazil).

Wosh, it took only a short time until the drinks came. My starter shortly after and only a few minutes later the main meal. The final brew coffee in the archaic aluminium filter after a short request if it can be served.

Even if the staff changed, everything worked smoothly and the food was all convincing.

We paid and walked on through the Dông Xuân Center. The Little...

I was the cutest customer. We entered with such high expectations as we had a trip to Vietnam just a month prior, with a big smile and waited until we were seated. There was definitely no welcome but it was fine, it was a busy time.

I made the biggest mistake of ordering pork ribs with "homemade" sauce. And I gotta tell you. That is NOT PORK RIB. It had barely any meat and so chewy. I went to our waiter and said "the sauce is so delicious, and I really don't want to send it back but it is not edible, is there anything you can do?" He told me that he will be right back but SENT A SNARKY STUCK UP WOMAN to come and tell me "THIS IS WHAT YOU ORDERED AND THIS IS WHAT YOU GET". I demonstrated to her how much chewy it was and that is not how pork ribs should be like, she went "THIS IS A VIETNAMESE RESTAURANT, NOT A GERMAN RESTAURANT". Hmm... ?? I mean. Yeah I know but what is the relevancy here?

It is not hard to say "Hello, what is the problem with your food, unfortunately we have a policy and we do not redo the service, etc." Honestly I would be like "Okay" But this bitchy attitude is NOT acceptable.

I am so sick of this bad customer service in Germany. I wonder if she could do the same in Vietnam. I DOUBT IT. I spent 2 weeks in Vietnam and I saw nothing but respect for one another when it...