Indochine Vietnamese Bistro — Restaurant in Salt Lake City

Our experience here was pretty disappointing, and we will likely not return, but that is mostly due to the location. It is too far out of our way to justify a 2nd chance. This review is mostly based on the quality of food and not its authenticity. I have never been to Vietnam, but my fiance lived her first 30 years in Vietnam, and she wasn't very impressed with its authenticity except for the beef with lime juice.

The food: For drinks, we ordered the coconut smoothie and the strawberry slush. I am not a fan of coconut flavoring at all, but I like fresh coconut to some extent. The coconut smoothie took me by surprise. I really liked it. The strawberry slush was ok. You could tell there was some strawberry flavor in it, but it tasted very watered down. If you are looking to avoid sugar, I would recommend it, but if not, I would not. For appetizers, we got the beef with lime juice and the salad rolls(spring rolls). The beef with lime juice was good, but there was very little beef for an appetizer that costs $13. My fiance loved the lime juice sauce, and aside from there not being enough meat, she liked this dish the most. The salad rolls were huge, packed with way too much veggie. The pork was so thin that I couldn't taste it in the roll at all. The sauce was just a hoison sauce with hot sauce (probably sriracha) and crushed peanuts. My fiance was very disappointed with the sauce not being a peanut sauce. I liked the sauce but was disappointed with the spring roll. For entrees, we ordered the iron plate with meat and shrimp and the Duck and bamboo noodles. My fiancee liked the duck and bamboo noodles, but she wasn't impressed. She said the duck was good, but the bamboo shoots could've been cooked longer. I tried the broth and duck, and I thought they were delicious. The iron plate tasted great, the sauce was delicious, and the meat was tender. My fiancee said it was the least authentic item that we ordered, but it tasted really good.

The service: The staff was friendly but probably the worst service we have had here in Utah. There were about 5 tables with customers, and three of them had already been served, and it still took about 20 minutes for someone to come to our table. We waited 15 minutes for my fiancees' drink and another 10 min before mine arrived. Which came with our first appetizer. My fiances entrée came out only a short time after we finished the appetizer, and mine came out a few minutes later, but we had not received our second appetizer. When we asked about it, the server quickly rushed back to have them make it for us, and it came out soon after. The reason for a 2-star service and not a 1 star is because of the server being nice and putting in the effort to get our missed item made quickly.

The atmosphere: The diner was nice. I liked the way it looked, and there were lots of pictures on the walls of places my fiancee was excited to tell me about. The cushions in the booths could probably be replaced, but it didn't affect our experience.

Overall, I thought the food was great, but I was very unhappy with the slow service. I couldn't imagine what they would do if the place was full. If you're close to the downtown area, it would be worth going, but it's probably better to order out. We probably won't go back, but mostly because...

I live in the neighborhood and have been coming here a couple times a year since this place open many years ago. Yesterday, the waiter we had needed training on everything. We showed up at 1:30, cheap lunch menu is served until 2pm. He refused to give us the menu. When I asked if they still did the weekday lunch menu he said yes, but it ends at 2pm. I said yeah, it's 1:30 now, we only want a quick lunch and will be out of there at 2pm. He then agreed to let us order off it, but 5 minutes went by and he didn't bring us the lunch menu. I finally stood up and went to the front and got one. We waited and waited for him to come back to get our order, I stared at him and he finally noticed and acted like he just forgot us. We ordered 2 lunch meals and an appetizer. The appetizer came but he didn't bring us any plates to eat it on. Our food came, and then I had to ask for water since we hadn't been served anything to drink, and ask for condiments which are usually brought to the table when you order at this place. When we got the check instead of being charged for the lunch menu which I had repeatedly told him that that was what we were interested in ordering from that day, we got charged for the normal menu price for the lemon chicken which was $4 more than the lunch menu lemon chicken! I asked him to change the check, that we had ordered Thursday lunch menu items. He said he could not change the check because the owner wasn't there. What was he talking about! The manager was there, the chef was there, surely he could change the check when he put in the wrong menu item! I paid for the check and tipped him, but it's sad that I don't want to go back to my neighborhood restaurant now. We took the leftover chicken home for the dogs, they both threw up bile after eating it, and I got diarrhea from the...

We wanted to try a restaurant that we hadn't been to before and although it was on the pricier side, the reviews were high enough so we decided to give it a shot.

Let me start by saying that both myself and the person I went with have worked in restaurants before and we're usually pretty lenient. Any one of the things that happened typically don't bother us but everything in combination left us with a less than ideal experience.

So let's just list it out:

We were standing right in front of the counter talking and looking over the menu and the host didn't even notice us until a minute later.

When we got sat she gave us menus and brought us water. She didn't ask if we wanted anything else to drink and tactlessly asked us to move our menus when she put the waters down. We were two people at a four person table.

When my food came out first the waitress didn't say how long the other food would take, she just set it down and walked away. When the other food did come and we started eating, it turned out that my food was a bit undercooked (which is funny considering it came out first)

The waitress never did a first-bite checkup to see how we were doing.

Later, she dropped the check off without asking if we needed a box or if the food was good or anything. We had to ask for the box as she was quickly walking away after dropping off the check. The check tray also contained 3 little candies, one of which was just an empty wrapper.

They also didn't say anything as we left the restaurant. They were not busy during that time, there were only 4 tables total.

Again, any one or even a couple of these things are easily excusable but overall the food and service was just not where it needed to be for the price, or in general.

The decor is kind of nice and I liked their music, so they do get some...