Dong Khanh

Dong Khanh has been around for 30+ years in Calgary. Family owned business. It serves most Vietnamese dishes plus, Chinese-​Vietnamese dishes like the 3 dishes I uploaded here. It as authentic as we can get in Alberta. Its very busy here, mostly Chinese-​Vietnamese eat here. Recommended to try but It might be too exotic for some people.

I sure love this place. I keep coming back. The food is awesome, fast, and inexpensive! Totally worth the drive during your lunch break for a good deal on Vietnamese food!

It’s refreshing to see a restaurant in the NE still charging a reasonable price for their food and drinks. Café sua da is still under $ 4!!! Haha! Most dishes are under $ 10. It’s not the cleanest place, but the service is quick and the food is decent.

Dong Khanh is the BEST place to eat wonton soup!!! enough said. It a Chinese Vietnamese restaurant… Their specials taste great, it comes either dry or soup based! I usually have the soup and it taste amazing.
I used to go there every Saturday morning and it was always crowded, the waiting line was so long but it was totally worth the wait!
They’re not so clean considering all their dirty dishes were in front of the customer kinda disturbing, but it’s in the corner.

Dong Khanh is a vietnamese restaurant tucked in the void on 16^th ave just between Deerfoot trail and Barlow that does not appear to have any restaurants. In a city where there is a vietnamese noodle house every 3 blocks, it was a surprise to see this one all on its own.
As always, I order a phở satay beef. To my surprise, the satay broth actually tastes like satay. A lot of the recent places I have tried in Calgary have been good, but the satay is always a little off, more resembling a spicy tom yum soup. Which is not really what I want. The satay soup here is peanuty and a little creamy, which is actually typical in Edmonton’s style of satay noodle soups. Its interesting how the styles can change over a small geographical area.
The beef thrown in was not that rare, it may have been cooked before preparing the soup. So that was unfortunate. And for the price of the noodle soup, it was a little smaller than what I would have liked. It appeared smaller than a ‘regular’ sized bowl offered at other noodle houses.
The phở satay was actually pretty good. It had a broth that I found not commonly made in Calgary, but its serving was pretty small and I left Dong Khanh wanting more.

I’ve been to Dong Khanh when they were located in Chinatown, then Crescent Heights and now 18ave. It’s one of those restaurants that wouldn’t wow you with their service or their décor so don’t expect much. In fact, they’ve been shut down before because they failed health inspection. This place is not for the picky eaters.
The food is decent enough for me to come back a few times though. I usually order the Phở Sate there which has a thicker coconut soup base. Not the best Phở Sate but this was the first Phở Sate I had when I was a kid so it’s memory lane whenever I have this. The bowl is small, bland and probably not worth the high price though. Try the Bun Bo Chien (I hope I spelled that right) which is a fried cake with egg. Also, try the special noodles with liver, intestines, and unknown parts etc.

It was my grandma’s idea to go here for lunch while we were in Calgary.
Apparently their «specials» are the noodles either dry or with the soup base. I also ordered fresh coconut juice and it was so expensive! The coconut juice was ~$ 3 when it just came from a carton that they poured out. When they gave me my drink, there were black bits floating in the juice… which looked like dirt.
It was very unappealing for me to see their unwashed dishes sitting in the plastic bins on the floor where customers can see it. They should really put that in the kitchen where customers can’t see them.
The entire family ordered their «special» noodles with the soup on the side and we were VERY disappointed. I’ve never had terrible Vietnamese food where I complained about it until now. The majority of the meat consisted of liver that were sliced very thickly and were huge! The meat and noodles had no flavour in it so I decided to sip the soup to potentially make it taste less plain. Unfortunately the soup base had no flavour as well =(.
In conclusion, I will never ever recommend this restaurant to anyone.