Vien Dong Restaurant — Restaurant in Spokane

I'll start with the one positive I gleaned from a recent visit: the food was delicious, with the caveat that it's really not worth waiting almost an hour for. Hopefully the owners read these reviews and make changes, otherwise they're going to lose clientele like flies..

Speaking of which - the fly catchers (sticky tape, foot-long varieties) are NOT a nice touch in the dining room, right behind where people are eating. And newsflash - THEY DON'T WORK because my companion and I CONSTANTLY batted away flies from the rims of our water glasses and plates for the duration of our meal.

Noise level: Intolerable. Either put in wall insulation, booths, ANYTHING to break up the echo chamber in the dining room, which by the way, is directly adjacent to the kitchen, where the staff incessantly yelled at each other throughout our meal (perhaps to be heard over the din coming from the dining room.)

Service: Excuse me? Here's some examples: Our initial server, a surly unsmiling man with downcast eyes throughout our interaction, brought chopsticks, a spoon and a napkin. I brightly said, 'Thank you' as I always do but he never responded or even looked up. Not a real winning first impression after your customers come into literally deafening noise in the dining area, which also was unbelievably hot. We never received water until 15+ minutes later when I stood up and flagged someone down, (thus beginning The Battle of the Flies.)

At this point I told the person we were ready to order (an appetizer and two meals). After enduring another uncomfortably long wait and dealing with noise to the level we could barely hear one another across the table, the server brought the appetizer. Period. No plates. No forks. He was immediately gone so we just looked at one another, unfolded our single napkin and tackled the messy appetizer. Strange. But hey, an adventure in dining!

Then more waiting. By now, we were approaching the 40 minute mark. We were confused as our ordered meals were exactly the same, just a stir-fried vegetable and noodle plate. What was taking so long? They weren't inordinately busy from what we surmised either, although with the noise coming from the kitchen staff one wouldn't believe it.

Finally! We see a server heading our way with a plate! A. Single. Plate. As we mouthed 'WHAT?!?' with upturned faces, the server said, "The other one is being made right now" and turned and walked away. By now, we were both VERY hungry (closing in on an hour from the time we sat down) so I told my companion to just start eating. (Save yourself first, eh?)

Miscellaneous: Never a water refill. Never a single 'checkback' to see how we were doing. A request for more napkins was ignored. The condiment tray on the table was visibly dirty with old caked-on food and/or condiment drippings, which was totally unappetizing. I finally couldn't take it anymore - from the hot restaurant, the appallingly slow/poor service and deafening noise level - I said we'd have to finish at home.

There was one sole bright spot, a young man who'd brought our first plate of food and who apologized for the length of the wait. He seemed genuinely concerned. This was appreciated more than he'll ever realize.

Otherwise, if you're up for a hot nightmare in dining, by all means give the "Finally Open" Vien Dong restaurant a try.

UPDATE: I revisited the restaurant out of curiosity and wanted to append my review.

Again, the food was very good. Two dishes were ordered but although "3 stars" of heat was requested, one dish was only mildly spicy and the other was totally bland. But again, no problem as multiple condiments were available at the table (in clean containers!)

No fly strips!

Definitely a negative was a black hair on the lip of a serving platter full of steaming food. Also, there was a sizable piece of eggshell in one of the dishes (no eggs were used in either order so this was a peculiar find.)

But, all in all, these were minor in comparison to my earlier visit. Additionally, the server...

I was recently on a trip to Spokane for a church retreat with my Grandma and my daughter and decided to visit Vien Dong based on the good reviews. We had just checked into our hotel and drove over, around 730 on a Wednesday night, hungry and thirsty after a long day on the road. The parking lot was packed upon arrival, always a good sign. The restaurant itself was well-lit, clean, and had a decent amount of satisfied looking customers, smiles all around. An inviting atmosphere, to say the least. Self-seating, so we quickly found our table, ready for our Dong! My daughter was pleasantly surprised to learn that they had both Coca Cola, and Pepsi on the menu, and ordered a Coke, while granny ordered a Thai tea (waters all around, and surprisingly good quality for what I would presume was tap). My grandma loved her tea, however, my daughter was accidentally delivered a Pepsi, and after our waiter walked right by us 3 or 4 times without making eye contact, she finally got rightfully impatient and took matters into her own hands, striding up to the host area, politely informing them of their mistake. No big deal, it was a busy night and these things happen! Finally, the food! Mmmm what a treat. Granny and I both loved our pho, number 19 to be exact (even if they did skimp on the tripe) , and my daughter ate so much pork fried rice we had to take her spoon away and put her oven mitts on!

The food was good, great in fact!

The service, not so much.

Several minutes into our meal, our server had once again made numerous rounds to every other surrounding table, refilling their waters and taking additional orders, while completely ignoring my daughter, my grandmother and I! This happened several times. He finally refilled our waters, once, over the course of an hour, leaving grandma wanting and waiting to order a bubble tea for dessert.

Late Spoiler Alert Apparently this place requires that you walk back up to the front to pay your check, something we were never informed of once in our entire experience. Eventually, we come to realize that must be how it works, either that or we're invisible. Either way, it appeared our server had no interest in interacting with us at our table anymore. So we finally go up to pay, and our server just happens to be working the front for a second, and rings us up. My dear grandmother orders her bubble tea at the counter to go, and our server literally rolls his eyes and let's out an exasperated sigh! As if we've ruined his night! After several long minutes waiting for our bubble tea (the whole time which our server is behind the counter playing on his phone), we finally get our bill, grandma paying as usual. Because she has a big ol heart and likes to give people the benefit of the doubt, she still tips 20%.

While not the worst service I've ever experienced, it was pretty bad, all due to our server/host. The food was really good tho! Too bad, because I don't think we'll ever be back,...

I grew up in a house with beige carpet and one of those refrigerators that made a loud humming noise if you opened it for too long. We had a clock in the kitchen that never kept the right time, but no one ever fixed it. My brother collected bottle caps for a while and then stopped for no reason. In middle school I had a teacher named Mr. Leonard who always wore short sleeves even in winter. One time he told the class that he once ate an entire watermelon by himself and nobody believed him. I used to walk to school past a dentist’s office that had a mural of a smiling tooth holding a toothbrush. Eventually the mural got painted over with a beige wall, and honestly, I didn’t even notice for like three months. My first car was a Toyota Corolla with a broken radio that only picked up one AM station that played old baseball games. I don’t really like baseball but sometimes I listened anyway.

In college I accidentally signed up for an economics class I didn’t need, but I stayed in it because I liked the graphs. I had a roommate who used to microwave hot dogs without taking them out of the plastic wrap. Nobody stopped him. One summer I helped my cousin paint his garage and we listened to the same playlist every day, mostly early 2000s pop songs. I had a cactus once but it died because I forgot cacti still need water sometimes. I don’t like folding fitted sheets so I just kind of roll them into a ball. I usually buy the same brand of toothpaste because I don’t want to stand in the aisle comparing labels. There’s a laundromat near my apartment that always smells like burnt lint. I go to the same gas station even though there’s a cheaper one across the street. I think I’ve walked past Vien Dong Restaurant maybe a dozen times before I actually went...