Jasmine Asian Cuisine — Restaurant in Houston

One. Of. The. Worst. Dining. Experiences. Of. My. Life.

Seriously....We went here for lunch. Our usual place was closed so we thought we would try it. My daughter ordered the vermicelli with pork. I ordered the vermicelli with shrimp. My son ordered the wonton soup with egg noodles. We had spring rolls and I ordered a small won ton. To be perfectly honest we weren't feeling terribly adventurous so we stuck with traditional Vietnamese dishes we thought were simple, but boy were we wrong.

The Wonton Soup came out with wontons that were undercooked and cold. Our spring rolls had fowl meat. The waitress insisted that I had ordered two orders of wonton soup in addition to the small I had already had. She proceeded to have an attitude with me over my order.

My vermicelli had some metal ribbon in it. I fished it out. The fish sauce was Rancid. My iced tea glass was empty over 30 minutes. The busboy served iced tea to another guest but never came to fill my glass. When I asked for iced tea the waiter said sure and went behind the counter and never came back. I proceeded to get up and pour myself Ice-T from the counter. They looked at me like I was crazy for serving myself since clearly they were not doing their job.

I went to grab condiments off of the table next to us that had not been bussed and was full of dirty dishes from the time that we arrived until the time we left which was the span of about 45 minutes.

The condiments had sticky stuff all over the exterior of the bottles and jars. They clearly had not been cleaned. Ever.

I'm not one to usually bash a restaurant however, on this particular instance they have a lot of work ahead of them. To be honest I'm not sure how they have such good reviews and how they are still open if this is how their establishment is operated.

The condiment jars are inexcusable. In fact the outside of our bowls had sticky substance as well. It begs to question what kind of dishwasher or if they are even using...

Do yourself a favor, and spend your time and money elsewhere. Made a bad decision today for lunch and this was it. It’s been a while since I’ve been back and since Saigon Pagaloc (similar restaurant) is closed on Monday’s, I settled for this.

Upon arriving, I walked into an empty restaurant and no workers to be found. It says the store opens at 11.. I was there around 11:45. Stood there for a good 5 mins before an employee came out and sat me. TThis place had a very obnoxious stench. Very vinegary smell (sour). Unpleasant nonetheless. Dark inside as well, they didn’t have much lighting. The table was super icky and the condiments were overwhelming dirty.

So once my friend came, we proceeded to order. Eggrolls for appetizers and sizzling beef for main entree. Eggrolls didn’t come out until we were almost done cooking all the beef.. Odd. When the beef came out, the portion size was ridiculous! Super tiny compared to Saigon’s. Same with the veggies, 2-3 lettuce and a few sprigs of mint? C’’mon now. And the color of the beef was off putting. Greyish. Seeing that, we made sure we cooked it well done just to avoid any tummy problems later.

Besides food being mediocre, service was worst. I asked for extra ice for my “ice tea” but server filled it up with more tea and no ice.. top of that, we had asked for extra veggies since the first basket was wimpy. Waitress came back with an new plate and wait for it.. just placed it right on top of our old veggies while we were still trying to finish eat it! Could of easily just placed it aside since we had plenty of space on the table. Absolutely absurd dude. I just can’t believed we wasted lunch on this...

The 7 course beef is their specialty and it tasted the same as 30 years ago. In fact, the original couple from Saigon Pagolac splitted and opened this restaurant. The beef courses as I said, tasted exactly the same while Saigon Pagolac changed for the worse. Their meat quality was tough and chewy. As for the number of waiters Jasmine is worse than Saigon Pagolac. Only one waiter walking around taking orders for all tables. Our water didn't get refilled we had to wave him over. He did stop by later and asked what we needed but then we were done. Since my brother insisted to pay, we let him, but later found out the bill was over $200 plus he gave $30 tips. That's way too much when added up with the dishes we ordered for 6 of us. We got overcharged big time. The live music gave it a nice atmosphere. Don't know if they jacked up the prices to pay these musicians. Watch your bill and pull out your phone's calculator! Two stars for overpriced. Besides the 7-course dishes, any other dishes such as salted pepper fried squid, soft lomein (cheap noodles, not the real thin noodles and bland taste), fried oysters with ginger & green onions are just mediocre and subpar. In the noodle dish there is a batch of meat pieces that was cut but never separated from each other. That's either an inattentive chef or the cook's helpers. This is a 2 star restaurant at best, unless you're there to slowly chew on your 7 course meat while listening to live music, then you can add another star to...