SOLOBOX Restaurant — Restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City

I went there two times in the same day, for lunch and dinner.

Food: At lunch I tried the fish and chips, they use the cheapest fish (cat fish) and there's not much of it. 75% is the fried crust which is just oil basically. They served a reasonable amount of french fries and two sauces (they were okay, but could have put more). Small portion. At dinner I went to try the snitzel with mushroom sauce. The meat was ok, good portion (although it had nerves and fat) the sauce was nice, but it was just a little. As for the sides, I laughed when the plate came to the table... It had one small boiled potatoe cut in half, and two mini carrots the thickness of toothpicks... Very, very poor portions. In both occasions, I had to go eat in another place because I was as hungry as when I went inside the restaurant. I ordered juice in both meals and a desert at dinner. In total, I paid around 450,000 VND for both meals It's expensive, they serve mini portions and they don't use quality products. Not worth going. It's just one more place minimizing costs to increase profits. For this amount you can eat 4 or 5 times elsewhere.

Environment: Was empty at lunch time and it had a couple at dinner.

Staff: Nothing to say...

This was hands down the toughest beef I’ve ever tried to eat, and at over three hundred fifty thousand dong for dinner, that’s just ridiculous. I ordered the rosé beef spaghetti with an asparagus side, and I couldn’t get through any of the beef without chewing endlessly, like chewing gum—still pink inside and yet somehow impossible to bite through. Even Vietnamese beef at a fraction of the cost isn’t this tough. I honestly don’t understand how they managed to make it this way. Was this the supposed Australian import beef they advertised like the steaks on menu, or local beef? Either way, at this price point, it’s not okay to serve this.

The sauce was also disappointing, just overwhelmingly creamy with no other flavors coming through—not even enjoyable. And the asparagus? Completely ruined by being smothered in cheap fish flakes, like whose big brained idea was it to smother fish flakes on an already delicious side.

For this price, I expected so...

We came back two nights in a row it was that good! The first night I got the steak donburi and my partner got the beef ribeye along with truffle fries. As soon as we tried the first mouthful we were hooked, the food was amazing quality and so tasty for the price! The steaks were cooked to perfection and seasoned beautifully.

Therefore we returned the next night. We tried the vending machine style table this night which was really fun to see as we have not experienced anything like this before. The staff were really friendly and helped explained to us how it worked. We ordered the Beef Pho and it was a huge! Very tasty as well :) we also had pudding this night, with a melt in the middle chocolate pudding which was great.

If we had more nights in Ho Chi Minh, I’m certain we would have returned again.

Please go give them a visit, it’s worth...