Rainier Restaurant is easy to miss if you're driving along Martin Luther King Jr. Way because it's…read morelocated below street level and isn't really visible from the road. Unlike many BBQ restaurants that display roasted pork, duck, and other meats in the front window, this place doesn't have that kind of display, so it can be easy to drive right past it. Don't let the location fool you--this place is popular, and I'm glad I stopped in and discovered it. I later found out that both Anthony Bourdain and Mike Chen have visited, which made me appreciate the place even more. The staff is friendly and attentive, and the food is outstanding. My favorite is the giant crispy catfish served with vermicelli and a delicious dipping sauce. The grilled conch is also excellent and definitely worth ordering. If you're looking for authentic Vietnamese food, great service, and some really good dishes, I highly recommend giving Rainier Restaurant a try. It may be easy to miss from the street, but it's definitely worth finding!

Our family of four visited Rainier Restaurant during our Seattle trip and enjoyed several of their…read morespecialties. The beef ong choy salad had a delicious balance of sweet, sour, and savory flavors, while the sautéed venison with curry and spices was tender and flavorful. The baby clams with crispy rice crackers were savory, spicy, and fun to eat. The crab and fish maw soup was also flavorful, although slightly salty for our preference. The restaurant has an older, cozy atmosphere, and the service was excellent: quick, friendly, and efficient. Overall, we had a wonderful dining experience and would definitely recommend Rainier Restaurant. We look forward to returning!

Took my son to Pho Bac Sup Shop for lunch today and it was delicious! Very deep and rich broth,…read moreribs were very tasty. Very open with both family and adult seating. I did not have any coffee but several people recommended it. The staff was friendly and efficient! Parking is a little tricky but I am confident you can figure it out! Very good food!

Came to Pho Bac with my friend for lunch and everything was delicious! The restaurant was also…read moresuper clean and had a nice atmosphere. My friend recommended that I try the Bún bò Huế because I'm usually adding a TON of sriracha and spice to my pho . It was really good, and it came with a huge beef bone that was so tender and juicy. I will say, next time I'd probably go back to my usual beef brisket pho. I think I just prefer the flavor of traditional pho broth over Bún bò Huế, but I'm still glad I tried something different! Overall, still a 10/10. The only thing to keep in mind is that parking can be a little iffy, especially if you come during a busier time.

Ohmagawd!!! Miss Pho delivered big on the YUMM and customer service scale!!!…read more The Salt & Pepper Calamari were finger-lickin' good and the Classic Combination Pho tasted rich, flavorful, and so satisfying. It warmed and comforted me on this chilly Saturday. The Miss Pho Special with the huge bone-in beef rib, rare thinly sliced steak, well-done brisket, meatballs, tendon, tripe, and topped with a creamy raw egg yolk (very authentic Vietnamese-style) was very fun to try. I requested a side of sliced garlic and chili oil to mix in my pho and it added another amazing layer of flavor and texture. My only critique of the bone-in beef rib is that I think it could have been cooked even longer because I got some chewy parts that were tough to eat and a lot of the meat did not easily fall off the bone like I thought it should. Miss Pho is a super busy and popular restaurant. So be prepared to wait and make sure to add your name on the list at the register right away. Customer service can be mixed but I've been lucky to have gotten attentive and friendly service both times I've eaten there. Kudos to the owner who drained my pho of the broth leftover that I was taking to go and gave me a whole fresh separate complimentary container of broth because she wanted to make sure when I ate my leftover pho later that the noodles wouldn't get as soggy. I don't know if this is common practice for them, but I thought that simple gesture was kind and above and beyond. Thanks again :-) Support this wonderful small business! They are located off Holman Road near Carkeek Park and a QFC in a strip mall with a lot of parking. Dare to try something new! Happy exploring and happy eating!!!

We went to Miss Pho on a Monday night, thinking it wouldn't be crowded. We were wrong! There were…read morepeople outside waiting. We put our name on the waitlist for 2 people. After waiting for about 25 minutes we got a seat at the bar. We noticed that large parties of more than 4 waited much longer! Inside, the place is small with mostly 4-tops and a couple of 2-tops. The bar was perfect for us. They have 6 bar stools perfect for parties of 2. The staff is very friendly and they are efficient. We ordered the Crispy Salt and Pepper Chicken Wings for our appetizers, the Miss Pho Special and the Chicken Pho. The chicken wings were delicious! Crispy texture and salty flavor on the outside and tender juicy chicken on the inside! My partner ordered The Miss Pho Special. It came with a large beef rib that was so tender and tasty! The broth was so good! I had the Chicken Pho and the sliced chicken was a bit dry for me. The broth was savory and the noodles were delish! I want to go back to get a bowl of the Miss Pho Special! I think we found our favorite Pho place!

Xóm is a modernized Vietnamese restaurant located in Chophouse Row in the Capitol Hill area of…read moreSeattle. Our group of six spontaneously decided to grab dinner at Xóm since it was my birthday weekend! There was a bit of a wait to be seated since we didn't have a reservation, but luckily, we were seated within 30 minutes. We ordered the Xóm Wings (crispy whole chicken wing in garlic butter fish sauce reduction) to share as a group. These were delicious! The crispiness and fish sauce together was excellent. It had me drooling. For my entree, I decided on the Bún Thịt Nướng (choice of chicken or pork, vermicelli, lettuce and herbs, cucumber, picked daikon and carrot, purple cabbage, friend peanut and oiled green onion, and nước chấm). I opted for the pork option because that is always my protein preference with Bún Thịt Nướng. It's always a good sign with Bún Thịt Nướng is served with an eggroll without an extra charge, so loved that! Three of us decided on ordering some of their cocktails, which were fun! We had a great experience at Xóm and I would definitely recommend coming here!

My sister and I stopped in here for dinner on a Tuesday…read more Their menu is Vietnamese with a variety of hearty, creative items. We ordered the: Spring Rolls ($12) - fine Ban Xeo ($18) - big Crepe-like dish, really good, though I was surprised at the scant amount of protein inside Bo Ne ($25) - such a rich dish - I loved using the baguette to sop up the over-easy eggs and pate I suppose the items are on the expensive side for Vietnamese food, but it does feel plated and more high quality than your average pho shop. The ambience inside is earthy, tropical, and beautiful. The staff are nice and the food was prepared promptly.

One of my besties has not been here since moving to Seattle, so we decided to dine here on Sunday…read morearound 1pm after waiting too long in line for Mi La Cay due to its imminent closure later this week... some patrons waiting in that same line actually came here to eat as well so we weren't the only ones. Wait times got up to 20 minutes as it was a full house and several parties were ahead of us. There are mostly two- and four-tops inside as before along with bar seating, so this place still isn't the best for much larger groups. Since my last visit here, not much has changed, only that you pay slightly less if you use cash (about 9-59 cents less per item). We each got their garlic chicken rice dish and split a side of half & half (pandan and banan-flavored) waffles which came sometime after we finished our main dishes. Everything's still pretty salty so I drank a bunch of water throughout; otherwise garlic chicken is still the highlight and the coconut cloud/egg whip that comes with the waffles is still one of the best pairings I've had in a while! My bestie loved the coconut whip a lot :) I'm happy that The Boat is still lasting and going strong even with all the recent closures around the neighborhood! On a post for their IG, they will be closing for a few months after November 1 for a re-fresh, so they won't be back for a while as of this writing; get their awesome dishes here and bring friends and family over before that happens!

Saw that this place has been popular in Little Saigon, so it's been on my radar. Walking in, it's a…read morecasual space to eat for lunch and dinner. You are welcomed into an open space; however, the service was not really welcoming. We were standing there for a bit before knowing where to go. We were told to get seated and waited a bit for menus. The service itself is mediocre and slow. We got the chicken and rice dish and the chicken and egg noodle soup dish with an egg on top for both. Personally, my favorite was the turmeric rice. It was flavorful and cooked well. The noodles for the soup were also good. For being a chicken-focused shop, I was under the impression it would be something I'd be shocked to eat but it was okay. A little dry on the inside and some areas but the skin and flavor on the outside definitely stood out the most. I would say it's something you can check off on your bucket list when you go, but I wouldn't really put your faith in the videos you see online. Parking available. They share a lot with Pho Bac.

Tamarin Tree is one of those restaurants that consistently delivers, and it never misses! The…read moreservice is impressively quick, the portions are generous, and the food never disappoints We love bringing family and friends here whenever they visit, and we have our go-to dishes that we order every single time. The portions are so generous that we can often share several dishes family-style, which makes the experience even more enjoyable. I recently tried the virgin raspberry mojito, and it was absolutely delicious! Tamarin Tree has become one of our favorite spots to bring people we care about. Consistently great food, outstanding service, generous portions, and a welcoming experience. What more could you ask for? Highly recommend!

i have gone to tamarind tree countless times in the past and haven't been there in at least a year…read moreor more. we went for lunch and i was used to it being packed with people who work on pill hill or the i.d. but surprisingly, it was quite empty with only a handful of tables occupied. is that due to the razed building in front of where tamarind tree is located or the precarious/sketchy nature of the main corner of little saigon at 12th and jackson? either way there we're noticeably less people eating during prime lunch hours. the food was exactly the same quality and presentation i remembered. it came out relatively quickly and tasted good. i visited the bathroom at the end of our meal and this was where the noticeable difference was: it just looks run down and shoddy. it was clean but definitely not maintained well over the years. in general, tamarind tree used to be such a popular place to eat. it will still be a place i'll go but my overall impression is that it isn't what it used to be; it's seen better days.

Lotus Pond Vietnamese Cuisine is one of those places that does not look impressive from the…read moreoutside, but the food is amazing. It has that hole-in-the-wall feel off Aurora, but honestly, this is some of the best Vietnamese food I have ever had. I am Vietnamese myself, and I have been looking for months, really years, for a Vietnamese restaurant in the Seattle area that actually feels worth coming back to. A lot of places have been average, or they have dishes like bún riêu or bún bò Huế on the menu but do not really do them well. Lotus Pond does. I tried the bún riêu and the bò né with steak and sizzling eggs, and both were delicious. My friend got the seafood pho and loved it too. Everything tasted like someone actually cared about the food, and I really appreciated seeing menu items that you usually have to search far and wide for, or go somewhere like Orange County or Houston to find done properly. The only downside is that it is definitely on the expensive side, but I will absolutely be coming back. The outside may not be flashy, but the food is seriously worth it.

Hmm, I had some hype about this place from friends and I finally made it…read more Pretty empty when we showed up for a quick lunch. I am a pho dude so that's my order. And honestly I was disappointed, not the tastiest broth around and it just didn't get me. I might have to try it again anyways.

We chose BaBar in U Village for a late dinner. Although we arrived just about an hour before…read moreclosing, our server was welcoming and we received great service. My husband and I both had the great Garlic Crab Noodle dish. Others in our party had the Saigon Singapore Noodle and the Combo Vermicelli dish. All were delicious. We will return again for another great meal!

I'm rating it a four because food quality was great but portion size was around average, maybe even…read morebelow average. Adding to that prices were a little higher than I think they are worth, specifically the soft serve being over priced and having a bug in it. It was very good overall though and the food came out quick. Service was excellent! Other than that the ambiance was delightful with a quiet environment and decent spacing between each table along with nice lighting. There was no rush to order and price transparency on the menu as well. I liked that it also stayed open late too!

We walked in for happy hour and walked out with a happy belly…read more The vibe is pretty casual with moody lighting and retro photos on the wall. We sat near the patio for fresh air and better acoustics so it wasn't hard to hear each other talk. Food wise, we did half dozen oysters with house hot sauce (yum!), hollow bread, shrimp toast, chicken bite and mini donuts, duck egg custards, and fish and chips. Dessert was coffee and pomelo entremet (fancy). I will definitely do shrimp toast again and try some other dishes next time. Drinks are pretty but not super memorable. I enjoyed the service that's warm attentive but not over bearing. Overall lovely date night spots and solid happy hour food menu.

This restaurant is full of contradictions. On one hand, it…read morecontains some of the best individual dishes I've had in the city. On the other hand, some remarkably bizarre choices and inexplicably bad dishes leave you thoroughly confused. I'm a positive person (kind of), so let's start with the good. Their bahn tieu, or hollow bread, ranks up there as maybe the best bread-as-an-appetizer in the city. From the moment you cut it in half and feel the hiss of the steam escaping from the middle, you know it's going to be good. The outside is crispy, and the inside is so unbelievably fluffy it's wild. The honey coating on the bottom just adds that slightly sweet flavor that makes it even better, and the honey butter works perfectly to spread and let melt on the hot bread inside. For just $4, it's comes at an unbelievable price. We liked ours so much we ordered it again at the end. Following that same theme, the next thing we had, the toasted bahn mi, was also incredible. This is definitely not your typical bahn mi - as it comes in two mini triangle shaped pieces with a fried exterior. This outside has the perfect crunch and slight oiliness in its texture, and the inside of chicken liver parfait and pork floss just works so well. The nuoc cham also has essentially every flavor - sweet, salty, umami, spicy - it's the perfect dipping sauce. Ok, now let's talk about the truly incomprehensible. The rockfish fish and chips contains some of the worst fried fish I've ever had. The breading is beyond repair - it's practically soggy to the touch. When taking a bite out of the fish in your fish and chips feels like eating a bamboo shoot, you've completely lost the plot. I shudder to think about how this would appear when put next to some of the other fried fish I've had in Seattle. There's no seasoning, and to make matters worse, something just tastes very off about the inside. I don't even mean that's its overcooked, which it is, but there's just something weird going on that I can't quite put my finger on. Also, the tartar sauce might be the worst I've ever had. It's essentially just a pickled salad. There's no fat - no mayo or anything to provide something good to dip the fish into. It's just watery, liquidy, and functions atrociously at its job of being a dipping sauce. At least the fries were decent enough. If that wasn't everything - there's two more things that went wrong. The first one of these is just laughable. When we sat at our table and tried to order from the lounge menu, which is an all-day menu (not just happy hour), we were told that we couldn't be served the lounge menu at our current table, and had to be moved to the lounge area. And then - completely serious - we were proceeded to be moved like three seats over, now told we were in the lounge area, and allowed to order the lounge menu. It was so ridiculous both of us couldn't stop laughing for like five minutes. Even now I find it incredulous. The fact that there was some great firewall standing between the lounge and main dining area that prevented them from bringing a lounge plate one iota outside the allocated area is exceptionally funny. The second one is a bit more annoying. When we got our table, we were asked if we wanted still or sparkling water. I found this a bit odd - it reminded me of Europe - but I didn't think too much of it and asked for still, assuming that like essentially every restaurant in the US - the water would be complimentary. It was my absolute shock that we were charged 12 (twelve) American dollars for water. What!? In the land of the free? And the home of the brave? Really? Twelve dollars? Water? You know the kind where Seattle has some of the best tap water in the country, and you can literally just fill that up. Granted, it was probably partially our fault for not blocking the question entirely and asking for tap water from the start, but I assumed they asked between these two options to just determine the type of water we wanted. Overall, this has a couple of the highest highs, but the lows here are in the depths of hell. 5/10

Cute small cafe that serves fantastic Vietnamese food and specializes in matcha drinks…read more The banh mi chao aka beef skillet was delicious. They don't serve that dish at a lot of places in Seattle so I was glad they had it at Soufend Cafe & Eatery. It came with diced beef, two eggs, Chinese sausages, cha lua, pate, laughing cow cheese, some veggies, and a toasted French baguette. Overall I liked the sauce but I do think it was slightly salty. My friend got the vegetarian bánh xèo and it was HUGE! Each one was almost long as her forearm lol. It also came with plenty of vegetables. They put a lot of coconut creme and tofu inside the bánh xèo. Matcha with banana cookie foam was ok. The matcha flavor is there but it's not as strong as other matchas I've tried. Overall, we had a good experience and will be back! Hopefully get to try their popular bánh uot tower. Customer service was friendly; interior was clean and modern. They have self-serve water in the corner for you. They have their own private lot so plenty of parking. They're located on MLK st across the OG Joy Palace plaza.

Soufend is one special Vietnamese restaurant in the MLK Jr Way area alongside the veterans like…read moreHoang Lan or Rainier BBQ because of its unique options in the menu. The restaurant is in a small block with Sun Ta tofu and has a few parking lots in the front. However, those are filled up pretty quickly, especially on the weekend, so you may need to park somewhere else and walk over. The place is nice with a decent number of tables, unlike the parking. We always get seated right away. The menu has a variety of options coming from different regions in Vietnam. This is the first place that I know where you can find the Banh Uot tower and Banh Tam Bi. The portion of food and veggies is generous. However, the Banh Uot tower is a little bit overpriced in my opinion because you have to order the protein separately and they come in small dishes, so prepare to pay a bit more if you want to leave with a full belly. The coffee is not bad but we come mainly for the food. Feel free to ask the servers if this is your first time and they will gladly show you how to eat those dishes.