Huong Viet

Huong Viet is a somewhat ramshackle canteen attached to the An Viet Vietnamese community centre. The tables are rammed in tight, leaving barely enough room to get to your seat and ensuring that should you grow bored of your own conversation, you can make do with listening to the ones taking place either side of you. However, faced with a plethora of Vietnamese food on Kingsland road, Huong Viet continues to pull us back time and again with its heady mix of sublime food, bustling atmosphere and baffling staff.

Having said this, Huong Viet is not for everyone, in fact on most visits you’ll see people lodging complaints about the service; it is chaotic when they are busy (ie most of the time), but that’s part of its charm, so long as you have a sense of humour and don’t expect all your dishes to arrive at once. There is a fairly simple rule for newcomers to adopt when ordering here: go for things that have squares around them on the menu – the recommended items. We’ve eaten almost everything on the menu and they are not wrong.

On this visit two of us kicked off with the char-grilled squid and prawn summer rolls. It is hard to overstate how good the squid is. When it arrives we share a knowing look and then the conversation ceases until the squid has been hoovered up, although we do have a bit of back and forth over who gets the last piece. As for the summer rolls, superlatives come thick and fast. They are deeply good, so fresh that they make you feel cleaner for eating them. Delicious.

Having held back from ordering another five starters, we move on to a very favourite treats – the steamed sea bass with ginger. Every single time this is perfect. Try some crispy seaweed on the side. Emboldened, we ordered prawn noodles – something that we had neither had before, and wasn’t recommended (by the squares on the menu). It turned out to be an inspired choice. Fragrant, light noodles topped, phad thia style, with peanuts and flavoured with a perfect balance of chilli and ginger.

Other dishes to recommend based on previous visits include: Vietnamese pancake, lamb with galangal, chicken in a clay pot and the vegetarian curry.

The damage: around £60, including service. Corkage is £1.50 a head, but we opted for the excellent Hue Beer on this visit.
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david
8 Overall rating
Food 9 | Service 6 | Atmosphere 7 | Value for money 8
Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Bad service!
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4 Overall rating
Food 6 | Service 0 | Atmosphere 3 | Value for money 6
Tuesday, July 31, 2012

I just love this place.. can't ever get enough. I visit here literally at least once or twice a week and my pocket never feels empty and my stomach feels quite the opposite. I crave for this place... when it's all blue and gloomy i would have a warm pho that would cheer me up and when its sunny i'll have a noodle and meaty thing in a bowl plus a cup of Home made lemonade which is so refreshing. Okay.. i do admit the service is not the best but who comes to a restaurant to judge the service and not the food anyway?
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david
7 Overall rating
Food 8 | Service 6 | Atmosphere 7 | Value for money 7
Sunday, November 13, 2011

Used to love this place but turns out they have become arrogant and lazy. Young waiting staff this evening (open shirt and big gold medallion) was very rude and after a long wait for food said it would still be a while as 'seabass takes a while to cook' we had finished our other main dish 30mins earlier! Kicked up a massive fuss when said I wasn't paying the service charge...joker! And turned 3 sets of people away at the door without a reservation even though half the restaurant was empty!! I pity the owner!

Food was ok but service very poor and pricing definitely not cheap any more. Won't be going back as loads of great alternatives down the kingsland road like Song Que (another old fav).
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Anon
3 Overall rating
Food 7 | Service 1 | Atmosphere 2 | Value for money 2
Tuesday, July 05, 2011

We used to eat at this restaurant fairly regularly but after a shockingly bad experience this evening, tonight's visit will definitely be our last.

We both agreed the standard of the food had gone down, it just didn't taste as fresh. The service left a lot to be desired but this is something we had grown used to. All of this we could have lived with if it wasn't for the following...

After we had been kept waiting at the till for 15 mins and after another customer was allowed to jump in front of us in the queue to pay, we were told the card machine wasn't working. We didn't have any cash so I explained I would go and get some, we were then followed out of the restaurant and asked if one of us could sit behind and wait. I refused to leave my fiance sat by herself and pointed out that we were regular customers and had no intention of running off without paying! When I also refused to use a cashpoint that charged for withdrawals it became apparent that the waiter was under strict instructions to follow us for as long as necessary until he had the money. In fact he stayed with us, (or a few paces behind) for a very uncomfortable 20min walk to the free cashpoint next to our home!

This restaurant used to have a slight edge over the large number of other Vietnamese places on the Kingsland Rd but I don't think this case anymore. Also one or two have much nicer interiors now which result in less ambient noise so you don't have to shout over the table at your company.
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Tom
2 Overall rating
Food 4 | Service 0 | Atmosphere 0 | Value for money 4
Thursday, April 14, 2011

fantastic food, great value. only problem is likely to order far too much!
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Mr Sharples
10 Overall rating
Food 10 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 10 | Value for money 10
Thursday, March 17, 2011

Greasy oily food, rude service. Won't be coming back!!
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lyn
0 Overall rating
Food 0 | Service 0 | Atmosphere 0 | Value for money 0
Monday, July 12, 2010

Greasy oily food, rude service. Won't be coming back!!
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lyn - View all reviews by this user
0 Overall rating
Food 0 | Service 0 | Atmosphere 0 | Value for money 0
Monday, July 12, 2010