Cafe Hung Viet — Restaurant in Devonport-Takapuna

To the amazing owners - I have a special thanks to give to you at the end of my review 🥰

Great atmosphere and there were outdoor heaters that made it nice and cozy. The light from the heaters also gave an amazing glow to the food, I should have taken more photos myself but just look at yum the dessert looks in the golden haze!

My partner and I ordered oysters, and the crispy shrimp pancakes. I had trouble eating it before I realised you are supposed to let the pancakes soak up some of the dressing and it gets much easier to break up into bite sized pieces so that was my bad 😅

The oysters were very delicious and the salad topped it off quite well. Salad can often be a cheap thing on the side and a lot of places will just have cheap coleslaws although I feel great care was taken with the simple salad that came with our oysters. Uniquely flavoursome, it complimented the oysters well. Be careful of the chilli’s - I’m not sure what I thought was going to happen but my mouth BURNT - They were definitely VERY potent chillis 😂😭

The creme brûlée had a very crispy top! For all my foodie photographers - It would make a satisfying ‘break’ video! It looked small but it was filling and they even used real fruit ice cream - I could taste the strawberries and I think the white swirl throughout the ice cream was meringue flavoured 🥰 They definitely chose the ice cream with great care to compliment the slight bitterness of the burnt crispy top. Do not be alarmed by my use of the word bitter - It is still amazing, the sweetness of the ice cream and fresh strawberry evens everything out, and the creamy part of the crème brûlée is smooth and creamy of course, it’s not overly sweet.

To the owners especially the woman I presume to be the wife - A HUGE thank you for a memorable night. We had been turned down twice before this because my partner didn’t have his ID, even though we specified we didn’t have to get alcohol. Your hospitality really warmed our hearts and made our nights better 100%. I apologise for not saying more about the amazing quality of the food in person, I was honestly too in the moment of processing how to answer 😂 The flavours were definitely flavouring! And also - I have never been but would LOVE to go to Vietnam! Thank you a million. You really don’t know how much you made our night last night ❤️ I also feel like our second drinks had more alcohol than the first drinks we got and I’m not sure if I’m just imagining it but it still made us feel special so even if you didn’t add extra, we still say...

Im rather shocked with the amount of positive reviews on here. After visiting today for lunch the only good thing was the accompanying salad. We ordered the squid, which was so over cooked that the batter was a darkened almost blackened. As were the fries and the spring rolls. We also had the chicken which was on the line of being undercooked.

Overall the experience was pretty bad and definitely wont be going back. I have travelled through Vietnam, cook lots of Vietnamese food and this had no relevance to the cuisine that I know well. I was really looking forward to this as it's been a while.. It doesn't take much effort to make this right and hopefully this will will change in the future. The one fantastic thing was the wait staff, they were polite and attentive. C'mon you can change...

We choose to eat at Hung Viet recently for the first time because of the 4.7 star rating. However my experience was the worst I have encountered. The waiter took the order wrong and we got served squid rings which we didn’t order. The manager said that he would not charge for them, we later found we were charged. Then my main came out, I had ordered the lemongrass chicken. They gave it to me saying it was lemongrass chicken but it was pork. When we left we calculated our cost off the online menu and found we had been overcharged. On going back and inquiring about this I was told it’s because their menu does not include GST. ???? The GST would have been more than the difference so this did not compute. Shows a lack of integrity and unwillingness to own their mistakes. I will never eat...