Viet Grill — Restaurant in London

Good food but oblivious and selective customer service. I recommend this place to my mum for a birthday dinner after coming here on a date previously, but found my second trip glaringly lacking to the point I won't be coming back. Having arrived on time for our booking we were pointed towards our seat which was more or less in the middle of the restaurant. Note we weren't taken to our seats as you would normally expect from a welcoming restaurant, simply directed by a pointed finger. Having sat there for the best part of 5 minutes without even a menu I was shocked to see the same guy who instructed us where to go, gleefully seat a table of 4 white men right next to us, with menus in hand then take their drinks order. We sat there watching as their bottles of wine arrived that he poured, again still waiting while their food order was about to be taken. 10 min later, still waiting to be acknowledged as staff generally walked right past our empty table looking everywhere except on us, we finally got the guys attention by waving him down. He ultimately blamed his colleague, who apparently supposed to have been our waiter, a colleague who never actually materialised, if even to check if we needed anything more or to apologise for their complete lack of service. He ended up taking our drinks, starter and main order all at once which for me is not how a good restaurant serves customers. Overall the food was good although I preferred the starters of salt and pepper squid and vegetable spring rolls more than the stir fry chicken and noodles main. It was a little too salty for me or maybe I should have selected something else to offset the salty fish. My mum enjoyed her crab and pork neck starter and pork meatballs dish, but felt she had had better Vietnamese food. Not a place I'd recommend if customer service is high on your list of priorities and certainly avoid on weekends for the same reason. Sadly it's just another one of those places that doesn't appreciate repeat business and customer loyalty over which table has the most to spend that night. You would think 2 years of closures would make companies a little more attentive to keeping all customers happy. I'll be trying somewhere else next time I'm...

Walked past this place and it seemed fairly busy, plus the menu had a lot of options, so we gave it a try. At first I was impressed at the selection of veggie options, but then when the food actually came it was a total disappointment. The spring rolls - cooked in the same style as we'd eaten in Vietnam, but there were barely any veggies inside! Basically just fried noodles, which was very stodgy. My 'lemongrass' tofu bun (noodle salad) bowl - this tofu was terrible, it tasted of absolutely nothing, no lemongrass to be detected, coupled with plain noodles and some lettuce and cucumber. It wasn't unpleasant, it just had absolutely no flavour. I drenched it in soy sauce and that made it passable. My boyfriend's pork chop rice dish (set deal) - this comes out as a pork chop, mound of rice, spring roll, fried egg and bowl of soup (all separate), which is fair enough - a bit funny to look at though! However, again he said there was not much flavour apart from the pork chop, and that he said tasted a bit too 'artificial' - like takeaway chinese-style chicken? This was still the best dish we had.

Final nail in the coffin for us was the drinks - Saigon beer was fine, but my 'Guava Juice' (£4) came out as a glass full of crushed ice with about 100ml of Rubicon from-concentrate guava juice (I saw them pour it), which costs £1.79 a carton at Asda. So about 17p worth of guava juice in a glass. When I'd asked for a top-up (and pointed out I had a glass full of ice) the manager came over with another glass of ice + juice, no smile, and quite awkwardly said 'this is how we serve the non-alcoholic drinks'.

Overall, it was tasteless and overpriced with fairly rubbish service (our actual server was nice enough) - not at all representative of actual vietnamese food. Much better places to go...

This place has quickly became one of my fav Vietnamese restaurant in London! I didn't use to go here much, but a couple of friends really love it so I gave it a go, and they didn't disappoint. I would give it 4.5/5 if google allows it. I'm originally from Vietnam and think the food here is genuinely authentic and well made! Here's what I think they do really well and some pointers of what I think they can do better:

What they do well: The atmosphere is mostly very pleasant and professional, with lovely decor and good service The range of food options are varied. Some of my fav dishes are: the salt and pepper silken tofu, imperial spring rolls, steamed rice roll Hanoi style, crispy fried sea bream, and Pho. Generally I find their deep fried dishes to be light, well-drained of any oil and perfectly crispy, which is hard to find. I also love their fresh sugar cane juice when they have them! the price range is reasonable, good portion sizes, not too busy that you have to queue/reservation is usually available

What I think can be improved: For their Pho, sometimes the Pho is made with fresh noodle (hand-cut) and sometimes with the instant stuff they buy, the fresh noodles are infinitely better! If they can't do this everyday, they should say when the fresh noodles are available for more picky customers like me :) The flavour of the dishes/dipping sauce are a little bit too sweet for my taste (I think the chef is from the Southern part of Vietnam, whereas we have a less sweet tooth in the North). It'll taste so much better and more healthy if the food was a bit less sugary! While the staff is nice and mostly attentive, sometimes they forget part of your order (esp. when busy) so you need...