Urban Orient certainly has nice décor with its lovely, postcolonial interior, but sadly, that is as far as it goes. There are so many things wrong with the place that it is hard to know where to begin. So here goes...
Firstly, I found the service confusing - menus are placed on the table so one is led to believe that Urban Orient offers table service, yet when it is time to order, you are expected to go up to the till to pay for your food (inconveniently) in cash beforehand as they do not trust you enough to pay for the bill after you have finished eating. This is simply uncivilised. And then there is the kerfuffle of the filling in the order form yourself at your table while a waitress lingers over you explaining to you how to fill it in, which begs the question, "you are the waitress, why don't you take my order and fill in the form yourself?".
The manager appears at first to be friendly, but as time goes on, turns out to be incredibly grating, interrupting our conversations and lingering far too long at tables. What you want from a manager is someone who directs their staff in order to provide an efficient service - liasing with the bar, the kitchen and the floor, so things run harmoniously. What we do not expect is to wait 45 minutes for one baguette and a sparkling water (both prepared at the bar), while my companions got their hot food twenty minutes earlier (prepared in the kitchen downstairs).
And was the wait worth it? Not really. The food is mediocre at best. Portions are paltry whilst being expensive. The Vietnamese baguette bread was stale, and the pâté so obviously shop-bought - a depressing rendition of the kind of banh mi you'd find on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. The Pho Bo was bland, the broth lacking in seasoning, body and depth. The Dim Sum we ordered is the kind of fair you would find in a frozen aisle of any Chinese supermarket - something that is not bad in itself, but we expected more for what we paid for the four sad looking prawn dumplings that arrived at our table. The nuoc cham dressing for the Bun Cha was lacking in punch. The side plate of beansprouts, chillies and herbs to accompany the dishes was stingy, and furthermore not fresh but greying round the edges. The Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk (when it finally turned up) tasted good, but was small. The cappuccino was a bit rubbish however - the milk was not properly frothed and was far too hot and burnt the espresso underneath. And to top it off, the table for three we were sitting at was so tiny that eating our meal with drinks became a balancing act. I ate my baguette off my lap.
All in all, Urban Orient is about style over substance. I wanted this place to be really cool - but instead, the three of us left feeling ripped off and annoyed. Our suffering was made all the more excruciating because the service was so unbelievably slow, yet felt like we couldn't leave because we had already paid beforehand. You would be better off getting on the Overground train to Hoxton and trying one of many Vietnamese eateries on Kingsland Road, or even just down the road to Mangosteen in Gypsy Hill or An Viet in Croydon.
Helen Duong read more
