Lua Vietnamese Cuisine — Restaurant in Edison

Summer roll with shrimp was good. Nice looking restaurant, nice staff but not attentive at all, calm jazz music. It looks like a high-end restaurant. Food is not good. Fried rice had no taste at all. Seafood in the rice was chewy, I think it was calamari, fish balls, and shrimp, so I couldn't eat most of it. The soup was ok that came with it. I ordered no onions or garlic, but that never affects any food that I order elsewhere, so that is not the problem. There's something crunchy that I liked just for the crunch, no taste though. The peas and carrots were frozen vegetables. Not sure what type of rice it was, but the rice was small and looked like instant rice, but I don't think it was actually instant rice. Short rib was not short rib as we normally see it. I never had short rib on a bone. That was also chewy and fatty. Had to throw out most of it. Thai iced tea was weak and didn't have the usual taste. They offer fresh orange juice, but it's not fresh squeezed. Luckily I asked first. They offer salty lemonade, but not plain lemonade, so I passed. Server never came back to check on us, and it was not busy, so no excuse. Staff cleaned a table while we were eating, and the smell was overwhelming and turned my stomach. I won't be back. Low quality and very expensive for what we were served. Normally I will give restaurants a second chance, but not this time. I didn't get any feeling that this was a Vietnamese restaurant. Nothing tasted authentic, and no flavor. It seems like it's owned by a non-Asian who has no idea what the food should be. They never asked if everything was good. When they saw the plate with 1/2 of the meat chewed and left on the plate as inedible, they didn't ask what was wrong. He just took the plate and walked away. No communication at all. I had to pack my leftovers myself, but I probably should have just left it, because it was inedible after reheating it. $17 for tasteless fried rice - no Vietnamese spices or flavors. At least they didn't charge to use the credit card. I asked for the check, but he never came back to run my credit card, so I paid online. I feel ripped off and regret this. I wish I could get a refund. I didn't complain while I was there because they never came back, or even looked over when I was looking over at them. I got so disgusted that I just left it alone rather than getting up to go talk to someone, paid, and decided to give this review. Normally I would say something or come back a second time, but obviously they didn't care about the customer, so I am reviewing after this first visit. Horrible,...

This place was the least crowded on a Saturday evening in Edison around 8:00 p.m., so we decided to give it a try instead of waiting in other close-by restaurants. We usually love Pho anyway. Once we walked in, it seemed the waiters had a minimalistic approach in terms of customer service - a waiter pointed to us behind the bar and said you could sit at that table by the window. We proceeded to sit down, and for a few minutes, was not greeted by any waiters. After that, two other groups came in and sat close by when the same waiter came holding a full tray of water and tea, and gave water to the other two groups, and interestingly gave us two teas. I joked with him, he guessed it by looking at our age that we had wanted tea. He didn't say anything one way or another, and since I was afraid that we had to wait for another unexpected while before a waiter will show up, we asked him to put in our order right away. I also asked him to change my chopsticks because my pair of chopsticks were made up of two different kinds in different lengths. My husband ordered the stone bowl beef soup, which turned out to be quite lived up to the $40 charge. I ordered some rice wrap dish which was so-so. We also ordered the spring roll as appetizer, but it didn't came until after the main dish. Wondered why. No server ever checked with us afterwards if we liked the food or not, nor did anyone came over to fill our empty tea cups. Anyway, even though the food was decent, and the service was somewhat satisfactory, we will not come back to this place - and here's why: the punk rock style music they were playing was way too loud, disturbing, and absolutely not customer friendly, it's not family friendly, nor was it's suitable for couples who want to talk. My ears were literally hurting as I left this place. The lady bathroom was also quite messy and required attention. I mentioned this also because I actually saw workers behind the bar checking their phones, or fooling around - there didn't seem to have any one person in charge - if there was a manager or someone in charge, may be the place would be run better. P.S. the tendon in my husband's dish was actually not well-cooked, it was too hard to be consumed. A Vietnamese place which has tough tendon, that is a big...

I feel embarrassed that I recommended this place to some friends a couple of weeks ago. To be clear, I visited this place in February 2025 and there were some issues but when I ordered the P1, I still got some filet mignon and the normal line up of meat per the menu. Lunch today (May 2025 ) was a different story. Though if I had to be honest with myself every time that I’ve been here since two years ago, things have gone downhill just a little bit every visit. Today, as soon as I walked in, there were loud banging from the staff throwing utensils and tableware around in the kitchen and prep areas. And this noise continued on throughout the meal service. It rose above the background music that was neither Vietnamese nor English. The cups that used to be class are now plastic. A minor point, but this is just to show that everything that used to be A+ before is now a C. I ordered the P1 again, and so did my husband. We both got each: one beef ball sliced in half, 2-4 strips of extremely fatty beef, 2 strips of stripes, 2 slices of “thit chin,” and some bits and bops of what I think is left over corner meat. There was no filet mignon. There was not even “thit tai.” I’m sure if I brought up this point with management they would have tried to convince me that the bits and bobs of the left over corner meat are either filet mignon or “thit tai,” but I think we all know better than that. Judging from the waiter’s response to my question about the sugar cane juice drink, and management’s response to some other complains (in other reviews posted here), I think quietly eating, and never coming back is the right call. I usually order some banh mi to go afterwards so I don’t have to worry about the next meal, but not today. It all was just too...