Little Hanoi

Pretty OK, pretty cheap. Pretty not much.
The staff are so nice. I really wanted to like this place, but… I’ve never had vietnamese food that didn’t have that bursting with fresh flavour.
Now, for £6.50 at lunch you get a 2 course meal and it’s decent… but it’s just… the salt and pepper squid rings were battered with flavourless batter. The herbs in the bun bowl were nothing. The sweet chili sauce was lacking in umami and chili, and just sort of sweet.
So, no, really.

I love Vietnamese food. I’ve had it in different countries but mostly in the states. I walked in and was sat in the corner. I order Phở Bo and Café su da. 10 minutes later, the waiter came back and said they don’t have any more Phở… (seriously? how can you run out of Phở) Okay, so I ordered a noodle dish instead. It was okay but tasted more like thai food with beef instead. The waiter was rude. I said «cm n» after I got my food and was given a dirty look. My café su da never came to my table. I paid and left.

Pas très bon et plutot cher (12£ pour ma marmite de boeuf).
Pas d’atmosphere.
Si vous voulez mangez viet dans le coin, allez plutot sur un des millions de restos sur Kingsland Road ou Cay Tre sur Old street.

Not great atmosphere, in fact, pretty mediocre, but the food is very good. Owner is cool too. We just had him ‘run the menu’, and he brought us out dish after dish, and beer after beer, and charged us for 10 beers between a table of 5, when I think I drank about 10 myself.

Not sure it’s true Vietnamese, but if you order correctly, it’s pretty good and cheap.
The staff are super friendly. When I was there, I was in one of my indecisive moods, so I asked the waitress to just choose for me. Let’s just say I think I’m going to do that from now on. We had a well balanced meal that we never would have chosen ourselves. Strangely the highlight was a very simple dish, pak choi cooked in garlic and hint of fish sauce. I think the moral is, the simpler the better.

Very much a two star place. The food was ok, but completely inspiring. My phở was actually pretty bad but the restaurant redeemed itself with quite tasty soft shelled crab.
The vibe was dead and cavernous (best bit was the spinning table — what does one call a Lazy Susan is in Vietnamese?). I thought it was pretty expensive for what you got.
Service was inattentive considering we were virtually the only ones in there.
There is a definite reason that everyone goes to Ca Tray. Do the same.

As a Vietnamese restaurant this scores a two. An extra star could scored overnight if it was relabelled Little Bejing or something more… well… Chinesey. I nipped in here with a pal for lunch as according to the window signage, they do a buffet deal and I’d never had a Vietnamese buffet lunch. I still haven’t.
The food wasn’t unpleasant, it just wasn’t what I was expecting. I suppose it’s like going in to a steak restaurant that only sells fish and chips. The fish and chips might be stellar but when want you want is a slab of hot dead cow on a plate the tangy wonder which is tartare sauce doesn’t cut the mustard.
In the end, it was I suppose, ok, but not OK!

Really great little Vietnamese place. Very authentic food, and a huge menu — almost too big. It was actually hard to narrow down what I wanted!
Really enjoyed the duck with ginger and spring onion. Noodles were a bit bland though.
I hear the lunch is a great value, but I must say dinner isn’t bad either. Most mains will run between £5.50 and £8. Definitely worth and open till at least 11 every night.

I didn’t think I could ever give out only 1 star to anywhere serving Phở — but here it is, my worst Vietnamese restaurant experience.
I’ll keep it simple as I don’t like to rant on negatives for long. Little Hanoi just doesn’t seem to be Vietnamese. 70% of the menu seems like Chinese, as does the décor and the staff. Perhaps they can be forgiven as Hanoi is barely 2 hours from China and has a substantial Chinese population. But still, if you’re going to be a Vietnamese restaurant FFS learn what Phở is!
Our waitress (who the table next to us described as the rudest woman on earth) didn’t understand ‘fur’ as the pronunciation of phở, and then served my phở with nothing but the bowl of noodle soup and meat. No sauces, no vegetables, no herbs and no lime. I asked for them but only got some sauces. You’ve no idea how bad phở is without the extras. It’s terrible! And terrible is made even worse when there is only 1 meatball in the whole soup and the lack of beef has supplemented with reformed pieces of chicken breast. Does this sound like phở to you?
Our incredibly crap meal came to almost twice the price of the places on Kingsland Rd and for that we were treated like slaughter cattle by our waitress — she really was horrid.
Constructive Criticism for Little Hanoi — close and re-​open as Little Chengdu. There’s enough Vietnamese round here now, and I bet you could do a real good Szechuan restaurant instead.

If you like Vietnamese cuisine i can thoroughly recommend Little Hanoi in Shoeditch. At lunch time you can sample an excellent buffeteat as much as you like for £5.50. The A la carte menu is also available at lunchtime and of course in the evening and is very good value. The wine is also reasonably priced. This venue has a Café type atmosphere and is very popular with the Hoxton village locals.