Au Lac Family Restaurant — Restaurant in Hà Nội

Simple, small restaurant with indoor and outdoor seating featuring traditional Vietnamese cuisine. Some English spoken. Cash and credit card payments accepted.

Nice quiet space to escape the hustle and bustle of a busy tourist area on a hot (or occasionally cold!) Hanoi day. Host is very friendly and speaks English well. Menu is expansive and offers a variety of dishes, some that appear more authentically Vietnamese and others that are less so (pasta, breakfast, etc.)

The standout dish of our outing was the Hanoi-style grilled fish. A generous helping of grilled fish over sauteed veggies. Served with a plate of fresh herbs and rice paper wrappers to make your own rolls. Wrappers weren't soaked and so were a bit stiff and crunchy but the flavors were very good.

On the other hand, the frog/chicken/beef with lemongrass and chili was rather lackluster. Not bad, just not overly flavorful. The frog might be worth ordering out of curiosity and looked tender enough. But in all three there was as similar, non-descript sauce that didn't add anything in terms of flavor and was more of a distraction than anything. Each served with a side of rice.

The Hanoi-style fresh spring rolls (not fried) had good flavor but again the rice paper wraps were a bit stiff.

A nice little hideaway but the food is average. However the jasmine tea is...

DO YOURSELF A FAVOUR AND AVOID THIS PLACE. I had a terrible experience here. Ordered Bun Cha which comes with a pork in a bowl with rice noodles on the other plate. Once I tried rice noodles it had a very sour flavour (usually rice noodles are tasteless, so this one must have been very old/bad) so I asked the waiter if the taste has to be like this. I got the answer that it should not be sour, so I asked to change rice noodles while my pork was cooling on the table. After 10minutes I got a new plate of rice noodles... the waiter was waiting for me to try (that was weird as he was standing like half a meter from me) BUT.. It was even much more sour that the one in the last plate and it had a very strong terrible smell... I told to waiter that it is inedible, and I got the answer that it tastes good as he tried it himself. But I offered him to smell what I received and they imediately took the plate from me. So the waiter was lying to me that he tried. Anyway the pork was acceptable, hovever the portions are small, but they didn't charged me for the noncence they gave to me. But please avoid this place if you don't want end...

We expected a lot. Maybe too much. Google reviews placed this place at 4.9 stars though. We disagree. Let’s start with service- quick enough to hand out menus and take our orders but on their phones throughout. It’s a mercy they look up long enough to notice us hapless guests. We literally had to beg for the check. Atmosphere is rather dated. I know it’s on a side street but… Now food. I had the fresh shrimp spring rolls which were good. My friend had the fried minced pork rolls. She preferred mine to hers. I ordered the black pepper beef and rice. I found it a little too sweet and barely ate it. My friend had the duck with pineapple and rice and said “it’s good if you don’t want authentic Vietnamese food.”...