Picture of Viet Grill, E2 8DP

Historical version 37 of Viet Grill, E2 8DP (view current version)

Vietnamese restaurant on Kingsland Road in Shoreditch, sister restaurant of [Cay Tre]?.

The restaurant is over 2 levels. The ground floor can seat 60 people at tables and 7 at the bar. The basement can seat approximately 50.

bob visited at Lunchtime on Thursday in July 2018. There were 2 other customers when I arrived and one more joined us while I was there.

bob had the Saigon Feed set lunch for £11 which consists of a limited choice of starters and mains. bob had the grilled piggy auberginephoto and the Chilli Pork Chopphoto. They were both quite nice.

Kake and bob had previously visited on a Tuesday evening in October 2007. The area around Kingsland Road has quite a number of Vietnamese restaurants, but we decided to try this one out since a number of reviews suggested it was one of the best.

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.

It's worth noting that although the place was practically empty when we arrived around 7pm, it was full half an hour later.

See also:

Accessibility info: 2 steps to get in. Toliets are down a flight of wide stairs with bannisters in the basement. There is also more seating in the basement.

Last visited by bob, July 2018. Opening hours taken from the Viet Grill website, March 2011.
OS X co-ord: 533477 OS Y co-ord: 182945 (Latitude: 51.529137 Longitude: -0.075560)
This is version 37 (as of 2018-07-19 17:29:37). View current version. List all versions.