Viet Kitchen (TOP RATED) — Restaurant in Barcelona

Grew up slurping pho with Vietnamese friends, burned my tongue on street-side bowls in Saigon, and hunt noodle joints like some people hunt Michelin stars. So believe me when I say: this place? Total disaster.

Maybe it was a cursed Tuesday. Maybe I pissed off a kitchen god. But this was bad. Like, airport-food-court-during-a-blizzard bad. How the hell it has 4.7 stars is beyond me—maybe people are rating the neon sign.

The pho and bun bo hue? Practically twins. Not the good kind. Bun bo hue's supposed to punch you in the throat with lemongrass, chili oil, and soul. Instead? Lukewarm salt water with identity issues. Overcooked noodles, overcooked meat. Texture of wet socks.

Meat skewers? Imagine someone grilled a shoe sole and said, “Here, taste Vietnam.” Dry. Charred. Lifeless. Something you eat on a dare outside a club at 2am, not serve to actual humans.

Spring rolls? Slackers. Mostly loosely rice noodles wrapped. Dipping sauce tasted like out of the box syrup.

Fried Hanoi rolls? Double-fried crimes against nature. Crunchy like drywall, with a hot mess of sad meat inside. I’ve had better frying from carnival rides and state fairs. The sauce? Liquid sugar pretending to be nuoc cham.

Fish cakes? Grocery-store frozen aisle, deep-fried by someone who hates joy. Nothing redeeming.

Mango salad—should’ve been a reprieve. Instead, a sugar-drenched fruit funeral. Limp carrots, soggy shrimp chips, and mango that tasted like it had beef with ripeness. Freshness nowhere to be found.

Now, the silver lining. Service? Sweet, fast, didn’t flinch at our big group. Props. Decor? Quirky in a good way. Place was clean-ish, minus the high chair that looked like it survived a food fight in a dumpster.

Good location. Cheap. Friendly. But food this soulless? That’s a hard no from me. Life’s too short for...

A bright spot first: the waitress was very kind! But is this really supposed to be one of Barcelona's best Vietnamese restaurants? We didn’t like it at all.

Our reservation was at 8pm on a Tuesday — early for Barcelona, I suppose. The place was empty (only one other couple showed up in the next hour). As we walked in, my wife immediately said: “This is a bit cutre” — which means something like shabby or run-down. And she was right: the floor was dirty, and our table was sticky like in a badly managed McDonald’s on a Saturday night. Loud music in the background – a rapper talking about pu**y (later switched to Vietnamese music).

The food didn’t make up for it. We started with Vietnamese chicken wings, and I’m not exaggerating when I say they were the worst wings I’ve ever had. Straight from the freezer into the fryer, it seemed.

The Pho — a Vietnamese staple — was just a bland broth with a few tasteless mushrooms and tofu pieces floating in it, plus a small tangle of noodles. The Vietnamese pancake looked nice, tasted okay, but judging by how our stomachs felt later, it was likely fried in old oil.

Sorry, but we didn’t enjoy this experience at all. I'm truly puzzled by the many five star reviews. For us, it’s only two stars — and that’s thanks to the...

Every Asian person hits a point in their travels where they just need some form of Asian food to survive. I was on week 3 of traveling and craving some Viet food, badly! I had previously tried another spot in Barcelona that was so bad that I had doubted my ability to get decent tasting Viet food anywhere in the city, but when I passed by Viet Kitchen, I decided to give it a go.

Was the food perfect? No. The spring rolls were loosely wrapped and fell apart in my hands, but the peanut sauce was great and the roll itself, fresh. Was the broth for the Bún bò Huế the best I’d had? No. It wasn’t as strong and fragrant as I’ve had in Vietnam or back in my mother’s kitchen, but it had a good kick and the meat and noodles got my taste buds buzzing.

So even though it’s not the best Viet food I’ve had, I’ve got to recommend it because it saved my life on this trip because I was really ready to give up on Viet food in Barcelona. I’ll probably be back as I feel the craving...