Author: Jessica_Owusuansah

I stopped here for a late lunch during the weekend. I was in the area, and I remember reading about this place in the DailyHive, so thought it was worth a try. When we arrived, we had to wait a few minutes for them to...prepare a table. Once ready, they took down our contact info for COVID contact tracing purposes. The space is very lush, with lots of greenery, as well as some Hallowe'en decorations. It looked nice, maybe a bit dark. They use a combination of physical barriers as well as distancing measures to comply with COVID regulations. We were given our menus and water fairly quickly, but it probably took over 10 minutes for someone to come back to take our order. We ordered the following: - Chicken Skewers - Good. Well marinated, and nicely cooked, it was a simple but well-prepared dish. Seemed a bit expensive for 2 skewers. - Beef Rib Pho - Good. Probably the biggest slices of beef rib I've even seen served in pho. Good broth, good portion size, beef was pretty tender although some pieces felt a tad dried out. - Wok-Fried Rice - Good. Deceptively small bowl, but the rice is packed in pretty tight so it's a decent portion size. Had that "fresh wok" aroma, so it was nice. - Noodle Salad Bowl - Good. I've started enjoying vegetarian dishes more and more, and thought this was a nice choice. Enough variety and flavour that I didn't miss having meat. The spring roll skin had a bit of chewy texture (as opposed to a crispy one), which is fine as it reminded me of a different dish (banh xeo). Service was very friendly, but super slow, maybe because they were understaffed. As mentioned, it took 10 minutes before we could place an order. Food came in a standard amount of time, but after we finished, it probably took another 10-15 minutes for us to find someone to get the bill. I noticed at least one other table that had to wave a server down too to pay the bill. Probably didn't help that they open the door for every customer that leaves. I noticed they tried to open the door for a set of customers that looked like they were up and about to leave, but they ended up talking while standing up for quite awhile, so the server ended up staying by the door way longer than they needed, so he wasn't able to help other customers while he was occupied attending the door. I should also note that near the end of our meal, they sat a couple at a table behind us which was clearly under the 2m rule, which I found a bit worrying. Overall, I thought the food was certainly pretty good, but I'm a bit unimpressed how they handled the service that afternoon. I don't think they had all their service priorities right that day.