Pho Nem Hanoi Home Cooking

Rating: 1

We ate dinner here in May 2026.

Vegetable spring rolls
Pork spring rolls
Chicken with ginger rice and coleslaw
Caramelised pork belly with rice and coleslaw

Before we tear Pho Nem a new one, we’ll point out that we suspect we got a below average showing from the Hanoi Home Cooks tonight. Business Andy’s mum comes here every week, and this place was packed, so we don’t reckon they could be stuffing up this hard every night. However, we can only judge the experience that we had. And the experience that we had sucked.

Talk about wait times! We waited about 40 minutes just to get our order taken, and who knows how much longer it would have been if we hadn’t gone up to the counter to beg somebody to come and attend to us. The waiter was friendly but seemed thoroughly frazzled, as though his colleague hadn’t shown up for work and he couldn’t believe he was having to try and do all of this alone.

The spring rolls were both enjoyable, but unfortunately the mains were both sub par. The chicken had the unwelcome surprise of being on the bone. And with only chopsticks and a spoon provided to try and pull dry fried chicken off the bone? Forget about it, you’ve no choice but to eat it KFC style. We will give credit to the ginger rice though, which was the best part of the meal.

What does the word caramelised mean to you? For us it conjured images of crispy pork belly where the corners have some kind of sugar dressing that’s gone crisp and sticky. Boy were we wrong. Blubbery bits of pork belly in a nondescript brown soup where the meat was dry and the fat was smudgey. This thing was foul. The Fee-Rex had one bite and was like hell no. Business Andy, in a fit of politeness and mummys-boy-ism had said that he liked it, so ended up eating most of the meal. Sucker.

Bookings recommended