Restaurants

This more recent branch of the popular Cay Tre (around the corner on Old Street) does a busy trade with non-Vietnamese diners. Its accessible name and clean-cut interior help, as do the poetic food descriptions on the English menu (gently simmered duck, lacquered pork). The restaurant claims to serve authentic cuisine, but our meal didnt live up to the promise. Braised citronella prawn curry was unlike anything wed seen in Vietnamese cookery, the shellfish arriving with finely diced peppers and lemon slices in an oily orange-coloured curry sauce (of passable flavour). The fragrant piper la lot (the la lot leaf, a relative of betel, wrapped around deep-fried minced beef) had its characteristic aroma almost entirely overwhelmed by that of cooking oil, and the beef was chewy. Mussel soup was an improvement. It tasted of sour tamarind and the citrous flavour of rau ram (Vietnamese coriander, sprinkled on top of the dish), which worked well with the earthy flavour of the mussels. In all, though, Viet Grill merely skims the surface of Vietnamese cuisine.

Time Out Eating & Drinking Guide 2008