newish one on Ocean Park in SaMo too - not great but OK.
possibly the worst quarter of a meal I’ve ever had. so bad we needed to send back 3 of the first 4 dishes and then we just canceled the remaining 3 dishes that didn’t even come out yet.
the sergios lien and jonathan not even there on the third night of service didn’t help either. the kitchen is clearly not ready.
email to restaurant forthcoming.
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Wow. We will cancel our reservations.
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Thanks for taking one for the team. That is truly unfortunate.
It was Lien’s birthday this week, though I’m not sure I would run off while introducing a new menu.
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Any specifics? Curious, not skeptical…
spicy beef salad was flavorless and left unfinished.
the baguette was stale and dry and had the texture of dried spackle. sent it back and got a slightly warmed stale and dry baguette in return. which was a real shame because the chicken liver was good but we didn’t have edible bread to eat it with.
the banh xeo was cancer on a plate and should have never left the kitchen. all we could smell was how badly burnt it was, sent back.
crispy imperial rolls were soggy and flaccid, the chicken filling was just bad. should have never left the kitchen, sent back.
after all this we had to end it and canceled the fried rice, clams with baguette and salmon salad.
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Whoa.
That Banh Xeo. I don’t understand how they could expo that out and not see how F’ked up it looks. Wow. Du Ma that would not fly in Little Saigon.
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Oh goodness. Lol. I’m kind of disappointed we didn’t go now. Lifetime memories. I have all sorts of dreams about opening up restaurants to troll people, but I wouldn’t serve them burnt food.
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it shouldn’t fly anywhere
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Why am I not surprised by this…
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Maybe the owner is a troll. I’ve had a vague sense there is something different about her.
There is a picture here of what it was supposed to look like.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ch98CbDrX5g/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
This Instagram post reads like an apology in advance for the fact that the cooks don’t know how to cook the food.
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Understaffed kitchen and cooks who never cooked Vietnamese. A recipe (pun intended!) for disaster. I trust they will work things out and will be firing on all cylinders. Probably more training and practice under the watchful eye of the Sergios is needed. I do need to try that biscuit sandwich when I come back and the pastry case looks pretty damn good
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yeeeeeesh…
not only does the banh xeo look … wow … but the herbs and lettuce don’t look terribly great either, which arguably might be an even greater indictment on the whole effort…
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The thing is, I’ve never cooked Vietnamese, and I’ve never worked in a restaurant, but I wouldn’t burn the bahn xeo. Because pretty early on when learning to cook at home you learn how not to burn stuff.
Similar comment re the imperial rolls. I haven’t done a lot of deep frying, but I do know that the oil needs to be quite hot or you get what we see in that photo.
Really, both of those items are like someone learning to cook for the first time and not understanding how to control heat.
Sadly if I didn’t know any better, the imperial rolls look like chivichangas—no offense to Sonoratown.
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What on earth?! It goes beyond the cooks not knowing how to cook Vietnamese food, I’d say they don’t know how to cook any food. Weird.
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I have not worked in restaurant kitchens in a long, long time, but this seems like an expo issue, no? Everyone except the infallible @PeonyWarrior makes mistakes, especially if drowning on a backed up line. That it got sent out is wild to me.
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This.
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If they’ve only got two cooks, I’m not sure how much expo is being done. Sounds like they’re just overwhelmed. I’m getting visions of ep 7 of The Bear, and feel bad for the folks. Hopefully they can slow down the number of tables they take and tune things up. They’re all capable of making good food, I’ve had it before.
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