Veranda Noodle Bar — Restaurant in Portland

My foodie friend took me here because it’s his favorite place to eat in the entire world. I’ve traveled quite a few places, and have had a extensive amount of great, good, and ok food on my palette...so he was interested to see what I thought.

I ordered an appetizer of Shrimp Tempura and had the Grilled Chicken Vermicelli (my friend’s favorite).

The shrimp was a plain battered fried shrimp with battered and fried vegetables like zucchini and sweet potato. I didn’t expect fried vegetables. I normally don’t like zucchini or sweet potato but they weren’t bad. It came with a sweet and little spicy sauce/dressing (which the Grilled Chicken Vermicelli also came with). The shrimp was good and decent sized, but I only got three and would have liked more. I think the price for it was around $9.

As for the Grilled Chicken Vermicelli, my friend told me to ask for an extra serving of sweet/spicy sauce/dressing. It came in a nice large bowl and includes lots of vegetables. Noodles are at the bottom, so you need to pour in the dressing and stir it all in with the noodles. The flavor was pretty great, but I got some a few pretty large pieces of fat/cartilage in it, so I had to pick those out.

All in all, pretty good...but if you want great Vietnamese food, go to Boba in Lewiston, Maine on...

This not a review about the food, it's a review about how I got treated when I picked up an order. I asked for some napkins because you never get any and while waiting for someone to get them [btw, I had to explain first why I wanted napkins!], an asian woman came out, whom I presume was the owner, and stood in the middle of the room and just stared at me for a good 2 minutes if not more. No smile, not a word, just stared. I had on a COVID mask because I'm not vaccinated & high risk but I doubt that would warrant that much attention. I thought she came out to help so I said, "napkins?" Silence. I tried again, "napkins?" More silence. Finally when she'd had enough, she left, again without a word. It was so odd and so brazenly rude she had to be an owner. What the heck was that?! Why wouldn't she talk to me? Whoever took my order was clearly asian with a heavy accent and I bet it was her since the only other person working in the dining room / phone area was someone without an accent. So she could understand me, and speak English. I might add, there is also a review at the BBB about this owner. Review says an employee admits to the owner telling employees to overcharge phone orders done by credit card. So, not someone who gives a damn about...

I ordered online for 1pm and went to pick up my food. I was told my food wasn't ready and it would be another 40 minutes. The server was very cavalier and didn't seem to care that this was my experience. When i asked if i was going to be credited for my order she said no and kept saying that she was alone. The customer service experience was terrible. The server seemed on something. My office orders from this location often and unfortunately i don't think we will be ordering here again. Things happen, but the response i got from the server was infuriating and i will not be back. I also made sure to share my experience with two ladies were parking and getting ready to come in. They decided to leave knowing the staff wasn't capable of providing...