Picture of Viet Grill, E2 8DP

Viet Grill, E2 8DP

Vietnamese restaurant on Kingsland Road in Shoreditch.

The restaurant is over two levels. The ground floor can seat 60 people at tables and 7 at the bar, while the basement can seat approximately 50.

bob visited on a Thursday lunchtime in July 2018. There were two other customers when I arrived a little before 12:30pm, and one more joined us while I was there. I had the Saigon Feed set lunch (£11) which consists of a limited choice of starters and mains. My grilled piggy aubergine photo and the chilli pork chop photo were both quite nice.

Kake and bob previously visited on a Tuesday evening in October 2007. Although the place was practically empty when we arrived around 7pm, it was full half an hour later.

We started with sliced beef grilled tableside and wrapped in rice paper (£5/person, for a minimum of two people). This is a self-assembly dish; a portable grill is provided along with a plate of thinly-sliced beef, rice paper wrappers, and various vegetables and pickles, and you're left to grill the beef as you prefer it before wrapping it up with the veg/pickles and eating it. Note that if you like your beef very rare, it might be wise to rest it for a minute before putting it in your roll, since otherwise the meat juices will leak out of the roll and make a terrible mess. (I speak from experience, and note that the staff member who showed us how to make the rolls failed to realise this would happen even though we told her we liked our meat rare.)

Our mains were slow-cooked catfish (£6.50) photo and Vietnamese quail curry (£6), and we shared a dish of water spinach in garlic (£5). The catfish was a little earthy-tasting, but steamed fragrant rice (£1.80) was very, very good. bob thought the noodles with beansprouts and onions (£3) were good too.

Accessibility: Two steps to get in. The toilets are in the basement, down a flight of wide stairs. There is also more seating in the basement.

See also:

Last visited by bob, July 2018. Opening hours taken from the Viet Grill website, July 2018.
OS X co-ord: 533477 OS Y co-ord: 182945 (Latitude: 51.529648 Longitude: -0.077147)
Last edited 2023-09-05 14:24:11 (version 39; diff). List all versions.