Ưu Đàm Chay — Restaurant in Hà Nội

I had one of the best vegetarian meals, if not one of the best meals, period, of my life at Uu Dam Chay. I found it via the Michelin guide and went for my husband's birthday dinner while we were in Hanoi (since he vegetarian) and it was the perfect celebratory meal.

Both their drink menu and food menu are HUGE. Like, actual hardcover picture books with beautiful photos and detailed descriptions. So it did take a while to get through them, especially since we were given one English menu and one Vietnamese menu (which I could not read) and our server did not volunteer any guidance. We ended up typing our order into my phone because I did not think there was any way we'd remember the names of the dishes we wanted. Thankfully, they rolled with that!

The food here is definitely best enjoyed as sharing plates, but you could do it as one appetizer and main dish per person if you're not very hungry. Between the two of us very hungry people, we shared: -Coconut water with kumquat and honey: mostly coconut-y, and the kumquat and honey flavors were very subtle -Passionfruit mojito: so refreshing, tart and sweet -Lemonade with lemongrass and pandan leaf: less tart than I expected given the lemonade and lemongrass aspects, but nice pandan flavor -Pine nut soup: comes in a lil bread bowl, so amazingly creamy, like stick-to-your-spoon creamy. One of our favorites. -Pomelo salad: unexpectedly works quite well with the combo of pomelo and cashews. Very much just highlights the delicious pomelo -Rolled tofu from Kenh village: basically spring rolls wrapped in a thick tofu rather than rice paper. Soooo good, comes with a dark and savory dipping sauce that I actually ate by the spoonful after the rolls were gone. One of my favorites. -Royal lotus salad: beautiful presentation, a fresh and crunchy salad that you should absolutely get. One of our favorites. -Khai giang rice with truffle sauce: feels like a hybrid of claypot rice and mushroom risotto, in the best way possible. So rich and satisfying and savory, without being overly heavy. Subtle but present truffle flavor. Love the unique rice, which is cooked perfectly. One of our favorites. -Steamed termite mushrooms with tofu: Three bowls of silky tofu topped with garnish and perfectly cooked mushrooms, swimming in a rich, almost curry-like sauce. One of my favorites. No idea what termites have to do with it. -Durian pizza: The cheese is on top of the durian custard, and it is housed in puff pastry. More of a dessert dish than a main dish, very good. Probably a bit much for two people but would definitely recommend if dining in a larger group.

Dishes seemed to come out as they were ready but in an order that made sense (listed as above). We ordered a lot, but it is hard to tell from the menu how big any given dish is going to be. I think we just barely over ordered, as we were already full by the time the durian pizza came at the end. Pacing was perfect. For all of that our bill came to just under 1.7 million dong, which was very much worth the amazing meal we had. I would definitely come back the next time I am in Hanoi, and think that even meat eaters would enjoy it here, as the dishes are very flavorful...

While I am not vegetarian my wife is, and a great deal of what I eat happens to be vegetarian. We are so grateful to have a restaurant like this in Hanoi.

The service and ambience were great. We were in a hurry and they were able to accommodate us by bringing our food out quickly.

However it would seem like a quick overhaul of the menu and the food is in order.

The menu is way too ambitious. It is literally a thick book that you page through resembling a cookbook with beautiful pictures as opposed to a simple menu. You could cut the menu by a third and it would still be too big. The bigger the menu the......

Food was so beautifully presented, every single dish. However another feature that all the dishes had in common is how bland they were. There just really wasn't a single unique taste let alone any dish that was flavor-forward. For example, there were some spring rolls that had nice pieces of mango in it but then one of the dipping sauces was a pureed mango. If you were to dip that roll in the mango sauce the only thing you will taste is mango, this makes no sense I would rather just eat fresh Mango.

The drinks were excellent! Beautifully presented and delicious. However, our blueberry mojito had a small plate under it with a green liquid for presentation. It is mind-boggling that this sort of thing is not thought through at all. As we all know if there is liquid on the small plate under your glass then every time you lift up the glass it will drip not only all over your food and table but if you bring the glass up to your face it drips on your shirt like it did on mine! Maybe I was supposed to hold the dish under it like some old pretentious British person drinking tea with their pinky sticking out; but that is simply not how I drink.

I am grateful to have this option but a quick overhaul of the menu will serve this restaurant well going forward. We really do wish you all the best because we want vegetarian food to thrive in Vietnam. Please simplify and consider flavor before...

I love vegetarian food and trying out new places, but this was very disappointing. I would not return.

The food is ok. There were only 2 of us, so we couldn't order a wide array of dishes. It would be better to have a larger group to try different things. We had the durian pizza and a fried rice. The fried rice was good but very small. The durian pizza was too large and filled us up when we would have liked to have other things. It was pretty good and interesting but definitely more like a dessert than a meal as it was sweet due to the durian and also on a butter puff pastry not a pizza crust.

We also tried to order the chestnut soup but they were out and then tried to order 2 more dishes, waited 20 minutes and realized they had forgotten it so then just got the check and left.

The place itself is very beautiful but the service was very strange. There were a dozen or so waiters, a ton of people walking by at any given moment but no one asks you to order or anything. You have to flag them down. We flagged down someone who started to take our order but then flagged down the next person and told him to finish taking our order. They continued to pass down things like someone would come out with 2 drinks and then give one to one waiter and then walk until they found another waiter to pass the other drink off to even though they were right by the table who had ordered the drink. We witnessed this happening every time they brought any food or anything from the kitchen which we assumed is how our order was lost. It seemed like it was supposed to be a high end restaurant but then didn't do any of the normal things like open the water bottle or announce the food. He would kind of reach around from behind and place a plate in front of us to our surprise since he didn't announce himself or anything. It was very strange and took a long time to not get half the...