Miss Saigon

They had the best Bo Luc Lac (steak cubes dish) in all of St. Louis out of every vietnamese place I tried. I liked this place. Surprised it closed. Saw that same closed sign in May 2010. RIP Miss Saigon…

Went by this place last night — closed, space for lease!
There was a «thank you to all our customers» sign in the window.

Oy vey, St. Louis. Surely we can do better than this. I’ll echo what previous reviewers have said: yes, good service; yes, clean and spacious; yes, spare but lovely décor. Honestly, though, that’s like telling someone that the jerk you’re dating is worthwhile because he has a full set of teeth. Foodwise, this place simply doesn’t cut it. Vietnamese food is all about flavors, and this is among the blandest food I’ve tasted. Their vermicelli bun with chicken (generally a healthy and delicious staple at a Vietnamese place) is topped with a toothy slab of near-​unseasoned chicken breast rather than the savory strips the dish usually comes with. The egg rolls are greasy, uninspired lumps. The stir-​fries are soggy. The fried tofu tastes like toilet paper. And — most damning of all! — there’s nary a strong cocktail in the joint to wash away the sorrow of your dull, unappetizing meal.
Get thee down to South Grand if you feel the need for good, cheap Vietnummies. Mama Phở, Lemongrass, and Phở Grand are all eagerly awaiting you with much, much better food than this.

This is a GREAT place to eat. I think it is better than Phở Grand. Fast and friendly service. Full of suggestions, if you ask.

i want to love you, but i just can’t.
given my total weakness for all things asian, i dropped by miss saigon during my trip to st. louis. i came for dinner and had no problem getting a table. the space is stark — open and airy, very minimalistic (i.e., sort of like a glorified cafeteria). it’s not a venue that really beckons for you to stay awhile. that said, though, it was clean and roomy and bright, so no problems.
service was quick. i had my order taken within just a few minutes and the food arrived just a few minutes after that. i had the bun with grilled pork and egg rolls. i have to say, i was disappointed. the noodles were just a little too perfect — i don’t know how to describe them, other than it felt like i was eating a frozen dinner (perfect like that). the pork was just ok – again, frozen dinner-​ish. the spring rolls — you guessed it, like a frozen dinner.
i give it points for speed of service, low prices (dinner including beer and tip ran me $ 15), and ample space, but the quality of the food. .. much to be desired.

the food is super super good, fried tofu, spring rolls, and rice noodle soup! Very good price — I’m happy to go everytime. If you love real Vietnam food (not westernized) with decent price and fast serving, this is the place!
By the way, everytime I was there, they had very good business.

Miss Saigon was solid but not amazing. The spring rolls were well made (you better have good spring rolls if you’re a vietnamese place) and the phở was good but not spectacular… but the meat in it was not that great.
Also, our service was rather slow.

Yummy! Everything I had was awesome (I can’t remember the names, but you really can’t go wrong). We had hot noodles in soup, yellow curry, cold noodles, and a beef dish. The Miss Saigon sampler had spring rolls, fried chicken, crispy rolls. It was gone in a matter of minutes. The décor is simple and sleek and our waiter was such a nice guy.

I have been to this place twice now and my two experiences have been quite different. The first time, we met a nice waiter who was very friendly and answered our questions thoroughly. I ordered phở and my friends ordered the curry chicken. The phở was decent, not the best, but certainly edible and good enough that I wanted to go back and try some of their other dishes.
The reason I went back is because they have stuff on their menu that my mom makes, but that you don’t often find at mainstream Vietnamese restaurants. The one that caught my eye the most was this pork and shrimp dish sauteed in a sweet and salty style. It’s hard to explain how it tastes unless you’ve had fish sauce before because it’s not quite salty the way most Americans think of salty, but it’s not sweet either (the taste is called «mang» in Vietnamese). Anyway, it’s the last thing on the menu if I recall correctly. I ordered this the second time I was there because I was craving it. It was presented very nicely on one of those fancy rectangular dishes. When I dug into it, I found that it was not quite as «mang» as I would have liked it. It was still good though so I suspect they may have toned it down a bit for a typical American palate. Or it’s becaues my mom likes to make it especially mang ;).
In any event, the food was good, again, but this time the service was not that great. Now I realize my Vietnamese is not the greatest, but I’m pretty fluent and when I was in Vietnam no one called me Viet Kieu (at least not to my face ;)). The waiter gave me this weird look when I ordered my food in Vietnamese, which I always do at Vietnamese restaurants because that’s how I learned the name of the dishes (ordering shaking beef just sounds silly). That’s fine, I may just be overly sensitive ;). He also never came to check on us after our meals arrived until we were done eating. We asked for boxes and received one tiny box and one large box for two dishes that had roughly the same amount of food left. That left us cramming one dish into one and having tons of space left in the other (I don’t like to mix my food).
Don’t get me wrong, the service was adequate, it’s just that after the friendly experience I had the first time, I was a little disappointed the second time I went. If you go there, try the curry chicken and if you’re feeling adventurous try the pork and shrimp sauteed mang. Try to get the waiter with glasses, he’s a really nice guy. Oh, we also sat outside and there was a fair amount of foot traffic and some of it was quite noisy. I would probably choose to sit inside next time.

I like the space. It’s in the newly developed Loop and it’s got high ceilings and relatively low foot traffic surrounding the area, which is nice on busy summer days.
Their fresh fruit shakes are good and the cubed steak with a fried egg on top, rice and nuoc cham is delicious. The spring rolls are only so, so, though. The service was friendly.

We drove around until we found a place that looked good, and I’m so happy we decided on Little Saigon. We had a Kimchi appetizer (and I love Kimchi) that was wonderful, but maybe just slightly spicier than I would have preferred. The curry dish I ordered was so delicious that I kept looking for more things to dip in the sweet sauce. I will definitely go back for the curry alone.

A little while ago, I was talking with a friend about Vietnamese food in St. Louis. We ran down our respective lists of restaurants we’d eaten at and I mentioned that there was another little Vietnamese place that I hadn’t tried and couldn’t remember the name of. (Yes, yes, not particularly informative, but bear with me.) Her eyes got wide and she said, «Not Miss Saigon!» It turned out that I was thinking of Kim Son on Olive, but I should have taken that as a strong warning to stay far away from Miss Saigon.
But I’m stupid sometimes, and the menu looks interesting at Miss Saigon, so one evening I tried the place. And damn, my friend was right on the money. Our food was terrible. Wait, let me turn the caps lock key on for emphasis. OUR FOOD WAS TERRIBLE. I would make that phrase blink in neon if Unilocal would let me do that. I had probably the worst roast-​pork-​and-​Imperial-​rolls bun I’ve ever been served, our appetizer was a wet and bland salad, and our other entrée was a tofu-​in-​curry dish (memory’s hazy on this one) that was probably the worst thing I’ve ever eaten in a Vietnamese restaurant. Time has allowed me to forget some of the details of what we were served, but no amount of time is going to convince me to try Miss Saigon again.
You can’t fault them for trying hard on the ambience: the place is clean, the dishware is of the fancy schmancy rectangular white variety, the service is attentive, the lighting is ridiculous, and the art on the walls is unattractive but still gets a B for effort. But please, for the love of Pete, don’t eat the food.

Before I got to STL, my husband would frequent this place for the Mi Dac Biet, so he wanted me to try it. It was pretty good, although it made me kinda thirsty afterwards. They definitely didn’t skimp on the yellow noodles — I wasn’t able to finish it. (Maybe I just wasn’t that hungry? Not sure…) We both liked the fact that they include the little fried pork fat to the broth… like how they do at TK Noodle. We also had the fried eggrolls — they are small but nice and meaty. There’s plenty of other stuff on the menu that I wouldn’t mind trying, but it was cold outside, and I just felt like eating noodle soup. The service is good — they made sure our water glasses were full, the restaurant itsef is nice and clean, and restrooms were clean.