Kettles Vietnamese Bistro — Restaurant in Santa Rosa

a few weeks ago we took a trip to Chandelier Tree and Avenue of the Giants, on the way back we passed by Santa Rosa and we were hungry, my wife found this restaurant in Santa Rosa because my wife wanted some Pho. It's across from a big shopping center with all the food restaurants, BJ and others. The restaurant is very nice inside, clean and plenty of tables. All young servers were quite energetic and attentive. We both wanted Pho and we ordered 1 large and 1 regular special bowl. We also wanted to try the salt and pepper calamari. The large bowl for me wasn't so large, not much noodles, I would be hungry after finishing this large bowl. The soup is catered to the local, is quite sugar sweet although the pho flavors are there. I had to ask for lemon to subdue the sweetness, now it became sweet and sour soup. Normally I like the drink all the soup if it's good, but I could only eat the meats and the noodles and left the soup. The salt and pepper calamari is quite tasty but the calamari is a little chewy, I believe these are frozen ones. I did finish the plate although my wife didn't like the texture of the calamari. I'm not sure if there are other VN restaurants in Santa Rosa, but this one came up and my wife found it. To me a bowl of pho should hit my spot, both quantity and quality for the price of $18. Anyhow, it's Santa Rosa and...

Oh my God do I want to love Kettles so badly.. I'm in the Napa Valley area for a week (I come annually) and always crave Asian dishes, so while charging the car, we stumbled upon Kettles. The menu is pretty big and the reviews were good, so we gave it a try. The restaurant was pretty big and had a decent amount of customers dining when we arrived. Service was as expected, she answered all our questions and gave us good quality service.

Now for the food. Prices are slightly higher than I'd expect for noodles, but if it's quality, then I have no issues paying a premium. I got the Bun Bo Hue, mixed meat Vermicelli Bowl, and the fried rolls. Let's start with the positive. The Bun Bo Hue was quite good. It had decent flavor, lots of meat, and had that body warming feel you should get when you have BBH.

The Negatives: The fried rolls were very very dry. Even if you lather them in the fish sauce they provide, it is still incredibly dry and hard to swallow. The verm bowl was alright, the meat again was very very dry. They give you a small cup of fish sauce to pour in, but you'd need like 4-5 of those to make up for the dryness. I ended up eating all the noodles and leaving most of the meat.. which is not something I do.

I might give Kettles another shot in the future, but right now it wouldn't be a...

We came on Sunday for an early dinner (5pm). No wait for a large table and there were quite a few four tops still available.

Food wise leaned on the salty end. Otherwise the food was pretty good.

We ordered:

Tofu papaya salad - Sour, sweet and very fresh with Thai basil flavor. My favorite dish of the night Salt and pepper calamari - Calamari was not stir fried and not battered and was cooked perfectly, I wish this had a little more pepper flavor but still delicious Butter fried chicken wings - Also not battered, chicken wings were only salted on the outside. This was good but would not get this again as there was little to no butter flavor Seafood stir fry noodle - It is hard to screw up a chop suey type dish. Delicious Curry tofu - Surprisingly on the sweet side. Not my preferred flavor but if you like your curry not spicy, this is a good dish to try Salmon Vietnamese clay pot - I was expecting more out of this dish, it was predominately chucks of Salmon over onions. My toddler loved this Combination fried rice with pineapple - This was on the salty end but flavor was good and was a family favorite

Service was hit and miss, when you had their attention it was great but difficult to get their attention at times. Overall would recommend if you were looking for a more upscale Vietnamese...