Viet Bistro — Restaurant in Leeds

I have been to Viet Guy many times, but the experience today was shocking. Today four of us arrived at 8 something, probably 8:25. I was quite hungry, the restaurant was quite busy, so I asked from the start how long we would have to wait for food, and was told it would be about half an hour. We ordered and sat down. Because I was hungry, I ordered a starter and quite quickly finished my Vietnamese iced coffee. Half an hour passed. No food. Then 15 minutes passed. No food. Another 15 minutes passed. Again, no food. No words from the staff. We saw other people around us getting served, but we were not. After waiting for more than an hour, I complained to a waitress. At 9:44, another waitress came to our table and said they were prioritising our food and it would be ready in 5 minutes. I said, I gave them 5 minutes and if there’s nothing, we were going to leave. 7 minutes later, there was nothing. Not even my starter. Other people were getting served, we were not. My mother now said she wanted to pay for the drinks and leave, so the waitress called the kitchen to ask if the food was ready. Apparently they hadn’t even started! The waitress said they didn’t have enough ingredients. Then why didn’t they say so when we ordered? Why didn’t they apologise and ask us to switch to something else? And if they really didn’t have enough ingredients, why did other customers get what looked like what we ordered? Not only so, when we left the restaurant, with an empty stomach, at about 10, they did not offer a discount for our drinks. The behaviour of the staff was shocking and unacceptable. I myself have worked in a Vietnamese restaurant, there’s no excuse for such incompetence, lack of professionalism, and lack of effort. Going to be a long time till...

The food was perfectly fine for the price, the spring and summer rolls were both quite nice, and although I’ve certainly had pho broths with much greater depth of flavour, after adding the lemon, mint and chili to it, I ended up with something fairly decent, at least by my own standards.

The service, by contrast, was not quite as forgivable - the place was horrendously understaffed, with one single woman taking care of everything - newcomers, people wanting to pay and leave, table cleaning, taking orders and providing people with their food. This obviously became more and more of an issue as a greater number of customers started to trickle in. I wouldn’t have minded, except for the fact that there was a 5-10 minute delay between when my partner’s food arrived and my own food arrived. Okay, not the most horrendous thing in the world, but still not something that one expects or particularly wants to experience when eating out, and ultimately something that could’ve been solved by having just one other member of staff on hand to pick up the slack.

The waitress, as respectful as she was, also mis-charged us at first, and required us to make up the extra money she’d forgotten to add to our bill before we left. Again, not an experience-ruining event, but something that indicates a lack of situational awareness or control, particularly when viewed alongside the aforementioned long wait time for food. Probably due to being overwhelmed with the work of more than one person, if I had to guess.

Overall not a terrible experience but I probably won’t be going back - had the food been truly superb it might be enough to risk the poor service another time, but in future I’ll probably be taking my...

I have been to Viet Guy a couple of times and I have to say that the impression that I am left with is that they have got to sort out the kitchen air extractors! The kitchen is below the restaurant floor and there is visible oil vapour caught in the glare of the downlights above the tables. You might think it is a bit like eating at a roadside restaurant in Vietnam, but firstly it isn’t moped exhaust and secondly I am not getting the whole meal including drinks for £2! I like the staff, I like the food, the prices are OK, but I can’t give the place full marks because of the air quality. I can recommend the vegetarian summer rolls and the tofu and aubergine which I had on my first visit, both were very nice. On the second visit the pho didn’t come with any Vietnamese mint or coriander, which is inexcusable. I expect a Vietnamese restaurant to have the essential fresh Vietnamese herbs, even the chain place Pho in the Trinity Kitchen manages to provide them! The pho broth was very (chili) hot and got more intense as the bowl went down, which suggests that perhaps they are using powder rather than fresh chillies. The vegetarian fried noodles were unpleasantly greasy, and in stark contrast to the pho, had no flavour at all! The noodles were stuck together because they were over cooked. I had to use all the condiments to make it palatable. Once again there were no fresh herbs. This is still the best Vietnamese place in Leeds for vegetarian options, but the quality of food is inconsistent in my experience. Also, I wish they had banh xeo and sua bap...