Loving Hut Healthy Cuisine — Restaurant in West Falls Church

This place has three kinds of food: authentic Vietnamese, Americanized Chinese (like eggrolls etc), and fast food. The fast food is the really exciting part if you're a vegan who misses junk food, like me. Here are some quick facts:

It's never very crowded, but somehow the parking lot is always full (also very hard to navigate). I park on the street and nobody's yelled at me yet.

The menu online is INCOMPLETE. It's missing like 1/3 of the dishes haha. Also it has a few things messed up, for example it doesn't mention that the club sandwich comes with avocado (it does).

The staff are mostly not native English speakers but I have never once had a communication issue.

Stuff is expensive =( Maybe it's just because I get carried away with all the stuff I don't usually have available but it's hard to eat here on the cheap. I guess you're fine if you just get one entree and maybe one appetizer or drink.

Once a month or so there's an all-you-can-at buffet for like $18 or something. I've never gone because I'm a grazer so all-you-can-eat is never worth it for me, but... maybe someday.

All right, here's a quick reference to the many items I have tried (for the curious):

Appetizers:

Spring rolls -- what you'd expect. Pretty good. Fried wontons -- quite tasty, but expensive. BBQ drum stick -- delicious. They come drenched in BBQ sauce, but if it's too much, who cares? You can just wipe it off. Cheese stick -- yummy! Can't say I ever had a vegan cheese stick anywhere else, but they do pull it off surprisingly well. The marinara sauce isn't very good, but whatevs. Spinach and cheese pastry -- like really rich spanikopita. Like, so oily I can't eat it all at once. But yummy.

Salads:

Loving hut salad -- hard to taste the ham in this one. Basically tastes like a thai cabbage salad. Nothing wrong with that.

Soups: Generally pretty good. Remember that when you order pho or other noodle soup takeout, the noodles/ bean sprouts/ basil etc will come in a box separate from the broth. Don't let it stand too long or the noodles will dry out and clump together. "Vegan balls" are not good. They just aren't. The tomato noodle soup is one of the strangest things I have ever eaten. Not bad. Strange.

Sandwiches and entrees:

The crispy burger is excellent. Fake chicken or fake beef; they're both tasty. It tastes very cheesy, which is surprising because if you open it up there isn't even that much fake cheese on it.

Hawaiian burger is just how you'd think. Fine, but I wish I'd gotten the crispy burger. If you ask for a burger on whole wheat they'll give you a roll that may or may not be a little stale lol

Bahn mi -- I've definitely had better bahn mi. Wish they'd use a better vegan mayo. But hey, it's cheap.

Fillet sandwich -- it's a sandwich. Meaning, good but pretty basic. Also the "fish" doesn't taste fishy.

Club sandwich -- absolutely delicious. Comes with vegan ham, vegan bacon, avocado, tomato and lettuce. This is the one I find myself daydreaming about at work!

Mom's tofu is amazing. Simple, yes, but just right. If it sounds good to you, get it.

Drinks:

"Mango bubble tea" is a mango shake with boba. "Tea" is definitely a misnomer. The boba itself is unreliable -- sometimes tender and perfect, sometimes old and chewy. Thai iced tea really hits the spot.

Dessert:

Cheesecake anything is delicious. The cake just tastes like regular sheet cake. I've never gotten a slice of cake and been pleasantly surprised. That said, if you miss regular sheet cake, you're in luck! Ditto for the moon pies btw.

tl;dr This should be a...

I cannot believe that I've lived in the DMV area for as long as I have and never visited Loving Hut until now. This spot has everything I could ask for, from a friendly and welcoming staff, delightful and homey ambiance, and an expansive plant-based menu that is both delicious and affordable.

I visited Loving Hut for a Saturday lunch with a friend, and we were immediately greeted by a super friendly hostess who directed us to the seating area and asked us to choose whichever table we wanted. We ended up choosing one of the booths toward the back, which was lovely, comfortable, and relatively quiet. A server came by just a few seconds afterwards with our waters and menus, and the service all throughout the meal was fantastic -- our server was efficient and responded to our (albeit limited) requests quickly and kindly. It did take us a bit of time to finally settle on what we wanted to order, as the menu was quite expansive and literally everything looked incredible.

I ended up ordering their canh chua (sweet and sour soup) with brown rice, and my friend got their mi xao don (crispy noodle and mixed vegetable). Both dishes were absolutely delicious -- my friend loved her crispy noodles, which were flash fried to perfection and paired perfectly with the stir-fried vegetables lightly coated in a savory sauce. The sweet and sour soup was also delicious and packed with tofu and veggies, although I probably would have preferred if it was slightly less sweet -- it felt a bit more like a SWEET and sour soup than a sweet and sour soup...but it was still absolutely delicious. I was also blown away by the portion sizes -- a single order was more than enough to feed two people, so my friend and I ended up with multiple meals' worth of leftovers.....not that I was complaining. I could honestly eat Loving Hut's food for the rest of my life and be perfectly satisfied (and well-nourished)!

I was honestly so surprised and grateful to find a spot in Virginia that offers plant-based versions of all of my favorite Vietnamese dishes, especially one that executes each of these classic dishes (all of which traditionally heavily rely on animal products to create flavor) to perfection. It's by no means a small thing for them to replicate the deep, rich flavors of bone broth or the unique texture of shrimp. Beyond the food itself, the entire staff is just so incredibly friendly and committed to loving the planet, animals, and all of their customers. I literally can't wait until I'm able to visit...

I was expecting that there might be some weirdness here what with the whole Supreme Master Ching Hai thing. But any cult-related oddities were apparently easy enough to ignore because I felt like it was comfortable gining experience.

This is one of those places that activates the Kid In A Candy Store part of a vegan or vegetarian's mind, the part that they never get to engage at omnivorous restaurants. Everything on the menu is vegan, so instead of playing the usual game of Spot The Thing On The Menu I Can Eat, my dining party had difficulty choosing just a few dishes to try, which is a great problem to have.

The staff was attentive and I was impressed with how fast they made the food. We didn't have a lot of time to burn, and so ordered some appetizers even though we hadn't finished deciding on entrees. It turns out I needn't have been worried about saving time because the appetizers came out just a few minutes later while we were still trying to figure out whether or not to try the Chicken Veggie Pho soup. The entrees also came out within just minutes. I'm sure part of this was them not being too busy at the time, but I still appreciated just how fast everything was. We were probably in and out of there in about half an hour thanks to this.

One of the dishes we tried was bathed in a sauce that we felt was overly sweet, but that's perhaps a matter of taste, and the other dishes certainly didn't suffer from this. The portions were smaller than I expected, but so were the prices, so I couldn't complain too much. Would definitely come back again to sample more...