Soy Vegan München — Restaurant in Munich

Difficult to rate. Given the high prices, rude staff, relatively bland food, but nice decor and that it's always good to have vegan choices still giving this an average rating. Not providing card payment options (except local giro card) is backwards thinking and doesn't make sense economically. By now it should be well established that the opportunity costs of not providing (contactless) card payment are higher than the fees. That alone is the main reason I won't return and what leads me to giving this otherwise average place a more negative leaning review.

Long: Vietnamese food is already heavy on vegetables and light on meat and seafood. Most vegan and vegetarian dishes are side dishes. At the heart of Vietnamese food is fish sauce. So it's pretty weird to me that patrons rate this as authentic. This is not an authentic place. But that's not a bad thing. It's a restaurant which aims to replicate authentic Vietnamese food in a vegan way.

With these expectations set let's be real. It does not get close to any meat based dishes. Not because not having meat is bad, but because the unique balance of Vietnamese food is super difficult to replicate without fish sauce and meat based broth. Instead, most dishes rely on soy sauce and mushroom which completely changes the flavor profile. I think it's telling that for a, what people describe "authentic" place, there are not a lot of Vietnamese people.

It's still a popular place. And it's packed. Every space is occupied and there is barely breathing room. The beautiful decor doesn't help. And I think maybe a bit too popular because the staff seems to be too reliant on tourists and non returning patrons. We observed the staff to be unattentive and outright rude (forgetting orders, no apologies, taking away platters which we didn't finish yet).

This place would fare better if it would set different expectations. Instead of aiming to replicate Vietnamese food, it should market as a Vietnamese inspired fusion restaurant.

On the good side, food presentation is top notch and if this is something you put a lot of emphasis on, it's worth visiting just for that. I am pretty sure that this also helped to "mask" the lack of taste.

Note that the lunch menu is wildly different from their dinner menu, it's like a completely different place. Pretty much standard menu which you'd otherwise find in a Thai/"Asian" lunch place, just...

First of all the communication was terrible, the staff member helping us couldn’t speak a word of English, he didn’t even try to ask a colleage to help us, because we found out that other staff members could speak English quite well.

Secondly, we ordered the crème brûlée, we asked for no coconut, as I’m allergic to coconut. With his terrible English he told us that it was okay and we wouldn’t get cocos. However you guessed it already, it did contain coconut which ofcourse isn’t nice when you’re allergic.

Lastly, when we tried to pay we mentioned that it did contain coconut but they didn’t show any sign of sympathy and just blamed the colleague because he was new? Then they told me they only accept German card. (they could’ve mentioned before as we were obviously not German) Instead of compensating us for the bad service they just told me to use paypal and pay the full bill (which was pretty expensive). In my opinion not the right way to solve a problem, as nothing is solved, and I could’ve ended up in the hospital because of...

I came here on a Wednesday evening (with a reservation which is definitely recommended)

The waiter couldn’t help us with additional information to decide between the many very delicious sounding meals on the menu but we still managed to make a decision:))

I recommend to try and share some of their starters as we especially enjoyed (and still think about) those. The spring rolls are definitely different to the ones you usually get at Asian/thai restaurants and really taste good! I also liked the fresh taste of the summer rolls and you can never go wrong with edamame and some dumplings.

The mains we had were tasty but not outstanding. The meat alternative was kind of chewy and the non vegans were very sceptical.

Overall, we did enjoy the food and would take the starters again but try other mains.

Thank you to the soy team for friendly service...