The ATM Cocktail Bar & Kitchen — Restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City

If you understand and enjoy cocktails, don’t go here. To the owner: Whoever bartended on Friday, 3/24, can not make balanced drinks. I don’t think they taste their drinks and if they do, they certainly don’t know what to look for. Please pull them aside, ask them to make you a few cocktails, and see for yourself.

Our group ordered 3 drinks: an aviation, a last word, and a corpse reviver #2 - Very standard cocktails anyone can make. Each one was barely drinkdable and very unbalanced. I literally cringed the entire way through my drink. The aviation had too much creme de violette and lime, making it too sweet and bitter at the same time. The corpse reviver and last word were also unbalanced, either too bitter or sweet. We left immediately after one round to Baron down the street, which is fantastic. The bartender and Japanese owner there both understand how to create balanced, high quality cocktails.

Service here was also subpar. No one asked for our first drink orders after 15 minutes sitting there. I don’t really care about this as much, but some people do so I’ll put this here. When I got a waiter to come, she literally ran (not walked) away after taking 2 of our drink orders, leaving 1 person without drinks. Maybe it was too busy and understaffed. We had to call her back again.

It’s worthwhile noting that the owner here also owns the alley. Maybe the bartenders there are actually knowledgeable, but I won’t take the risk. 3 standard cocktails, each one poorly made and easily fixed. I see that this establishment has mostly positive reviews so I hope the service and drinks I recieved was an outlier, but definitely would like to warn others as my experience here was so far from the 4 and 5 star reviews posted. It just felt like a group of very amateur service staff and bartenders unsuccessfully running a high end cocktail bar.

Highly recommend two alternative cocktail bars: the baron and iron bank. Much more thoughtfulness there.

To the owner: I can provide further details if necessary. In town for another week if you...

Not a very positive experience at The ATM.

The food was fine but the waiting time was too long. We ordered fresh oysters as appetizer which was supposed to be served first, but it ended up being our last dish. (We even had to remind the staff several times but they had no apologies and/or explanation). The light is a bit too dim for dining, it would be nice if there was a little candle at the bar as they do to other tables.

The bigger problem was their staff. One of them was too busy talking to another guest to see our signals calling for them multiple times. Another staff had a quite condescending attitude when they kept asking if I was sure of my order (For example: “A White Russian, please” “Are you sure, this drink has vodka”). This happened every time I ordered my drink, which was annoying.

I would not recommend The ATM if you’re looking for a proper dining experience (I understand that this place focuses more on cocktail for which they do quite a good job with competitive price, but they put “kitchen” in their name so I guess they could have...

I had been walking down this alley during the day many times as it is very close to where I was living and I just assumed it was a new Vietnamese bank ATM like all the others I had passed. The delightful surprise of a secret speakeasy type bar starts from the moment you first try to enter as you get the full ATM experience just to get in the door! As well as a full featured cocktail list, they have an exhaustive range of whiskeys as well as the perfect environment to drink them in. I loved just standing in the Royal Brackla whiskey den that is reserved for groups and events. Even if you don’t want to drink anything, visiting is an experience in itself! To top it off, I had a great bartender who I could converse with in English and suggested a customisation to a signature cocktail that perfectly...