Saigon Lunch Bar

Rating: 2

We ate lunch here in September 2021.

Beef lemongrass bahn mi
Beef pho

You may remember our review of Saigon Restaurant & Bar where most meals came with chips, save that information for later.

Today, the Fee-Rex ordered a rice dish, and they were out of rice. Side note: how does anyone ever run out of rice? It stores forever, it’s cheap and readily available, it’s not like it takes a long time to cook (and frankly, they had time; there was nobody else there), it was 11:45am and more than one of their meals relied on rice. You’re going to have to cook some, so what do you mean, you’re out of rice? They offered us chips instead, and it was then that we joined the dots. Saigon Lunch Bar is an offshoot of Saigon Restaurant & Bar, and the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

As was the case in Saigon Restaurant & Bar, the food was so-so. The baguette was way too crisp, the filling was alright, but it was poorly arranged so you couldn’t get everything in one bite, much like the tacos at The Gipsy Moth. The pho was reasonable, while it didn’t stand out it was enjoyable enough. It would have been nice to have had some water with these meals, for some reason they just left it in the fridge behind the counter.

It would have also been nice to have a coffee, but we were informed that the landlord owns the three neighbouring eateries, one of which is Robert Harris. And apparently, only Mr Harris gets to sell coffee. Why they continue to advertise it on the menu is beyond us. It’s a chalk board menu, just rub it off man. And then cook some rice.