Hanoi Cafe — Restaurant in London

Came here to meet a friend for a late lunch on Bank holiday Monday and was so surprised to enter a completely empty restaurant! I got there around 2pm for info, so I had assumed that it would be packed.

I went with the Hanoi bun cha and a hot Vietnam drip coffee and my friend went with the tofu spring rolls and a veggie pho. Food all came very quickly and portions were extremely massive for the prices charged so really good value for money. My bun cha was great and authentic, flavourful and juicy pork meat and pork patties in a pleasantly sweet and savoury sauce which went really well with the vermicelli noodles. Plenty of fresh salad on the side so it was a balanced meal. Hot coffee was also really nice and warm. Strong coffee aroma coming through with the sweet condensed milk which almost tasted like a dessert. I thoroughly enjoyed my meal. My friend is vegan so she was very happy to see how big of a vegetarian and vegan section there is on the menu. She was extremely happy with the quality of the food and highly recommend vegans to come try this place.

Vibes were so relaxing and homely. Felt like I was back in Vietnam in a local flat which was very minimalistically Southeast Asian. Service was great, the lady was so friendly and smiley the whole time. Definitely coming back...

Hanoi is pretty much slap bang in the middle of a number of good Vietnamese restaurants, some of which I've tried before but most of which are still to go. Sadly while this was OK it's not one I'll be rushing back to.

I ended up trying the lemongrass king prawn which was actually very tasty but I personally didn't like the way it was served. Everything was separate on the plate and it made it slightly more awkward to eat than necessary. My biggest problem was far too much coriander. It threatened to take over the whole place! Portion size was decent and I'd probably get this again.

The second choice was chicken coconut curry with steamed rice. Portion size on this was not so good although the flavour wasn't too bad and both dishes had a nice amount of chilli heat. Sadly the small pot of curry was bulked out with chicken and potato which meant that the chicken was lacking a little.

If you arrive before 8 o'clock you will get free corkage which is a pretty good deal (it will cost you £2.30 each after this) although the beers on the menu weren't too unreasonable. Service of 10% is automatically added you your bill as well.

If you need something quick and everywhere else is busy then you could definitely do worse than Hanoi but it is far from the...

I've been to this restaurant a few times. It's always quiet inside compared to the others (which I like as I usually dine in alone) but they've shown me again why they are one of the least popular on the strip. (I gave them another chance after having some bland and soggy salt and pepper tofu- silly me)

This restaurant is grossly overpriced and with food that lacks those gorgeous flavours and aromas you'd expect from a truly authentic Vietnamese reso.

Duck with sweet chilli sauce although not bad at all, would of been nice if it wasn't mostly bone though.

The homemade lemonade is really good here but again can you justify lemon, water and sugar at nearly £5 a glass?

The egg fried rice was inedible, it had a odd and unpleasant smell and taste, that gave me the impression that it was either gone off or they're cheating with packets of uncle ben. As pictured you can see the egg isn't freshly scrambled egg but dried Shredded egg. Very odd.

FYI you have to pay for rice/ noodles seperately as they don't include rice in their main meals. I was a little surprised that when I told the waiter I'm sending the rice back as it doesn't taste OK, they still tried to charge me for it. Customer service is disappointing considering they charge 12.5%...