To start, I am not Vietnamese. My wife, however, is Vietnamese, from Vietnam, and has only been in the country for a couple years, so her desires and taste for Vietnamese food is a bit harder to please.

We are from RI, and we drove up to Dorchester because she wanted to come to this restaurant. She has read countless things about how good the food is here, how wonderful, how authentic.... I could go on and on about how much good she has read about this place. I relented, and we drove up to eat here.

Luckily, we got a parking spot in their tiny, cramped parking lot. So we did not need to drive around for 30 minutes looking for a parking spot, which I thought was a good sign. In retrospect, should e realized it was a bad omen.

The place was jam packed, yet for some reason, there was s constant flow of people walking in to get food, and they always seemed to be able to get seated. Yet, when we arrived, they sat us at the booth right next to the entrance, on a cold day, when we had our infant with us, so we had to keep him bundled up and covered.

The place wasn’t the cleanest I’ve seen. It wasn’t disgusting. But it wasn’t immaculate either. Could’ve used s good scrubbing.

The waiter, even though my wife ordered in Vietnamese, spoke English to her. She couldn’t understand why, but whatever, maybe because she is married to me, a white guy.

The food took a while to come out. We saw people who came in after us, who ordered more complicated things, get their food before us. Maybe they were regulars, or friends of the owners. Who knows, but it doesn’t give s great impression to first time patrons.

We get our food, appetizer and main dishes, at the same time. Which is fine, nothing too wrong with that. But everything was just, warm. It wasn’t steaming hot, it wasn’t like it was just freshly cooked, it seemed as if it sat for a little while, like they were waiting for things to be finished. Or that they just forgot.

To me, my banh uot was meh. I’ve had much better, even in the bus stations in Vietnam.

She had a resounding meh about her bun mam as well. She said it wasn’t stinky enough, didn’t have enough mam flavor, and other complaints. But she tried to justify it to herself saying that maybe they didn’t make it stinky because of it being a restaurant that serves lots of food, as well as Americans who aren’t Vietnamese.

I said maybe it’s because the viet-Kieu that frequent the place, who were born here in the US, just don’t have the same taste for it as someone from Vietnam.

Either way, it was our first visit here, and probably ur last. The food didn’t wow us. It wasn’t worth the hour trip.