Ngon Vietfood — Restaurant in Essen

FOOD & DRINKS We made good use of their grand opening discount offer and ordered several items from the menu. If you are Vietnamese you should know that the kitchen is operated by a south as well as a north Vietnamese chef. This will make a difference on the expectations and taste. For example the Pho will be nothing like the ones you get in the south of Vietnam. If you have eaten Pho in Saigon then this probably won't be as near as good as you have experienced there. The roasted pork over rice was not bad but not great either because the meat was just reheated and the skin wasn't crispy throughout. The favorite dish of president Obama was done quite well with the exception of the noodles which easily broke into small bits. The banh mi wasn't served with a french baguette which in my opinion is a mistake. The bread wasn't fluffy inside and the crust was too hard. Yes, it should be crispy but when you bite into the bread it should become fluffy and light. The bread they use made it heavy and the bread itself has very distinctive taste. It should be more of a vessel for the yummy ingredients and elevate those instead. The avocado smoothie was really good as well as the sticky rice with mango and coconut cream.

SERVICE The service here is okay. If you are Vietnamese you probably feel that the service is better since you can communicate with the staff on another level. If not, you will probably say that they just do their job and that's it.

ATMOSPHERE The restaurant has two levels. I think eating downstairs is better. It isn't as cramped as upstairs, everything is better lit and decorated. I would recommend upstairs if you are alone or prefer a darker, more intimate vibe.

RATING For me it came down to one issue and that is the bread of the banh mi. I don't mind if you put your own twist on a dish but I think in this case it was for the worse. Take my 3 stars more like a 3.9 stars because anything else was good or okay enough. Maybe you even like the banh mi more that way. If you do, please rate them with four or more stars.

UPDATE They changed the bread for the banh mi to a traditional banh mi baguette and therefore the rating goes from three...

If you want an authentic Vietnamese food experience, you have to go to this restaurant. I will break down my experience.

Location : This place is hardly 10 minutes walk from Essen HbF. It's in the downtown area, so easy to go.

Food : We ordered Bahn Mi Baguettes, Bun Cha, Cuon( Summer Rolls) as our main dishes. And ordered Green tea(with Jasmine), Mango smoothie & Strawberry smoothie. You can count on me, you will never regret anything that I ordered. Everything was top class and would taste the same as if you are having it in Vietnam. I've been to many Vietnamese restaurants in Germany but I can bet they are best in the business.

Hospitality : The owner is super friendly and would come to you to comfort you on your food choices. The waitress that served us was also very humble.

Price : The food is averagely priced. It's not that expensive. I mean it's the taste that you get with this kind of money, is quite reasonable.

Ambience : I liked the wooden seating facility. It's comfortable and probably resembles that many restaurants have back in Vietnam. I liked the lights and overall ambience. It's definitely...

Awful experience. Staff didn’t welcome at all, took tens of minutes to get our food ordered, serving food took more than 30 min. Payment process was the worst. Card machine did not work, one of staff asked me to get the cash but she didn’t know where the cash machine was. Card payment machine didn’t work. But somehow, we told her we can’t withdraw cash at the moment and she made it work somehow but she charged 1.4 euro extra for card payment without noticing us. Payment process took a lot of time and there were staff in kitchen who could have helped but we were stood for minutes without help. A member of staff wore AirPods and did not help at all too. Staff didn’t even know the table number so asked us which table we sat at. The restaurant was not like Nando’s or McDonald’s where there was a table number attached on the table. Who on earth asks for the table number of their restaurants to customers? Food wasn’t good. Fried fish with many bones as well. It was more expensive side compared to other great Asian...