Sen Đại Việt Restaurant - Seafood - Phở — Restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City

This place looks smart, they have smiling staff on the street to entice one in and hand you an enormous tome of a menu.

Having chosen what I wanted, I waited an inordinately long time for someone to take my order. I finally managed to attract someone’s attention.

The order came, it was admittedly beautifully presented. BUT For the prices charged, I expect something to wow me. It did far from that. I ordered squid in fish sauce – the taste was ordinary and there were pieces of beak left in. The rice I ordered never arrived and it was impossible to attract anyone’s attention to ask for it.

Trying to attract someone’s attention to get the bill was also difficult. When I finally succeeded, the member of staff I asked then proceeded to deal with other customers on many other tables and when the bill finally arrived, it featured the absent rice. Another eternal wait ensued before I received the amended bill.

There is an army of staff who seem to spend most of the time either on their phones or running around like headless chickens. Some good management, customer service training and quality control are...

Worst meal I have had in 10 visits to Vietnam! Staff couldn’t tell us what was in any dish. 1 menu between 2 people, we were the only table in the restaurant at the time. Don’t be fooled by the seafood tanks, they are display only, nothing is fresh, frozen seafood and pre made frozen food. The prawns in my dish were dry and inedible, I could not swallow them had to spit them out. Food slow coming out, last dish came out as we were paying the bill, we were watching the kitchen, chefs sitting down eating and on their phones. We only ordered 4 dishes (2 of them were the same) there was a 25 minute wait between the 2 plates of crab spring rolls, but they were so dry and stodgy we were happy we didn’t get the second plates! So much amazing food in the area and we got served this...

I ate at the smaller outpost across the street, I guess a hotel lobby that they have tables in front of.

I chose it because I felt sorry for the lonely girl waving at customers and being ignored since the customers had just walked the gauntlet of aggressive Spa and Bar touts pulling them in.

Had I known it was a bigger place, I would have skipped. Everything had to be brought from across the street, food, beer, ice, payment machine....

Had caramel fish that was not very good. Maybe westernized but the burned sugar flavor nor the fish sauce flavor was very prevalent. Also was given a super small bowl of rice with it and I would have ordered 3 more if they did not have to pass through traffic to get to me.

Not cheap, not good, not...