Spice Garden Tamcoc — Restaurant in Ninh Bình Province

This is not a bad spot to get a meal, it's very popular for tour guides to take their clientele, so much so we were asked where our guide was. But that was probably the most care we had from the staff, needed a little effort to order and had the non bothered sort of air to the place, you know the one, where you put up with the rather rude shop owners because the food is real tasty and cheap. Unfortunately the food here was pretty average. Went with a selection of dishes to eat banquet style, admittedly not the local delicacies of goat or duck, but just the home cooked style eggplant, tofu tomato, morning glory garlic, curry/cary and banana blossom salad. We would have loved something more in the banana blossom salad, because the blossom itself is quite a dry, chalky sort of texture - this is usually a favourite but I've never had this salad so bland. As for the cary, I could taste the curry powder, but not in a good way - sort of just stirred in and not given much love to reduce down a bit, no flavours of ginger or lemongrass or anything and leaving me longing for a sprig of at least Vietnamese mint through it. They did however bring out everything with...

Disappointing as restaurant was recommended. It is a tour bus restaurant with set menu. We wanted set menu plus a couple of dishes from a la carte. It was to be 200 VD each for two set menus, but it jumped to 300VD for one set menu: odd. However we were able to swap out the main dishes. The food was just okay, fish was cold in the middle so evidently pre cooked and then reheated. Not good practice. Banana salad was excellent and tasty as was pineapple, but rest was all rather bland.

On settling the bill, the staff member who served us came up to me and said rather tersely “okay?” I assumed she was asking if the food was okay, but rather a strange remark to make to a customer!

There was no friendly interaction at anytime during our lunch visit, and I would find this place hard to recommend as it gives the impression that it is a ‘tourist’ restaurant, catering for coach parties (three small coaches parked outside when we arrived), and there was no atmosphere.

Worst meal so far in Vietnam, and...

Very bland food, we asked for salt and pepper to enhance the taste but that didn’t help either. The place seems to work by guides who bring unsuspecting tourists. Your guide helps you ‘decide’ the items to order. This is basically a pretense as everyone gets the same dishes, which is basically fried crackers, papaya salad, fried spring rolls, one goat meat dish and a chicken dish served with steamed rice. Dessert is cut watermelon. Drinks are not included in your tour price. When we paid for our drinks, the staff at the counter returned us change for a much smaller currency and quickly disappeared. Luckily my husband realized he’d been shortchanged and chased the guy into the kitchen. He quickly returned the money.

A very disappointing meal that left a bad taste in terms of service but no taste...