East West Brewing – Sai Gon 🍺 — Restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City

5 for the beer. 5 for the friendliness of staff 0 for organisation.

So the brewer Patrick Barnes of Portland Oregon knows his beers. Unfortunately he’s no idea about running an establishment.

We arrived at 4pm (I know, don’t judge it was raining and we’d been to the remnant museum so alcohol was needed…)

We were met promptly at the door and taken to the bar area. There was only one other patron at the bar and the young lady left us with menus.

We moved to the bar chairs and waited…

There were heaps of staff waiting around in the table area to noisily move furniture once some lecture/conference had finished. Eventually a server arrived and took our order.

Nothing happened.

Another server arrived and told us about the happy hour and suggested we change our order to 3 small beers … weird, but we did.

Modern Belgian Dark was unavailable so we chose independence stout, coffee vanilla porter and modern Belgian blonde The stout and porter arrived. Very nice. Then the staff disappeared again. (Not really they were all on their phones and chatting in the table area)

The original patron finished his drink and waited patiently… so patiently…

The bar was still empty of staff…

A new patron arrived… waiting patiently…

Bar staff finally arrived, started chatting to the new patron ignoring the original patron, finally he got his attention … waited… finally someone arrived to take his payment!

We waited…

Bar staff chatted… chatted… chatted…

I actually had to shout to get noticed and get our third beer. Fine, but not to our taste, which is fine, since everyone was far too busy chatting and being useless I had ample time to write this review.

Guys, go down the road and poach the bar manager from Pasteur Street Craft Beer, the staff need a kick and leadership.

Yes, I’ve run restaurants before and leadership is everything. If it’s not your skill set get someone...

I love craft beer, but unfortunately I didn’t liked my visit at East West Brewing Company. While it’s nice that you can order a tasting, there’s hardly any explanation given about the beers or the brewery itself. The staff is friendly and available for questions, which I appreciated, but I’m used to a more engaged experience when visiting breweries.

The beers themselves were quite disappointing tbh. I carefully chose my tasting based on my experience and the descriptions on the menu, but the actual flavors didn’t match at all. Some beers were too light in color, others had sour or bitter notes where they didn’t belong—or weren’t described (e.g. Modern Belgium Dark tasted like IPA and was actually light brown). I even left one half-finished, which I rarely do, as I consider it a waste..

To their credit, a staff member asked for feedback after we paid, and I shared my honest thoughts. He acknowledged that some beers may have been brewed too warm or left too long, which at least shows some accountability. He encouraged me to leave a review to help them improve, which I respect.

The location is central, clean, and spacious. They also sell bottles, cans, and merchandise (though I didn’t buy any for obvious reasons).

In short: a decent place to sit, but not one I’d return to...

Decided to try out the Viet craft beer scene on a Monday evening. Did a 4 beer flight. The Pilsner was decent, but the Red River, pineapple IPA and Mosaic PA were mediocre to my palette.

Decided I needed a jolt of American food, so I ordered the burger. It was cooked decently, and had pretty good flavor. The fries were not good, but I didn’t have super high expectations.

Service was abysmal. There were 4-5 employees flirting with each other back near the kitchen at any given time, while my beer glass was empty, and I was getting burger juice all over me. No napkins offered, so I got up and walked past a server behind the bar and took a wet napkin.

Took a Grab home. 2 hours later, my digestive tract was getting upset and thus began the longest 12 hours of food poisoning I have had in a long while. I’m still working through it as I write this. My guess is either the lettuce or the beef were the culprit(s).

Thankfully I didn’t have anything planned for the next day and can attempt to recover before leaving tomorrow.

Based on how the front of the house was managed, or lack of management, I can only imagine the back of the house standards.

They also charged me 4,000 VND for the napkin I had to retrieve...