Chinese New Year dinner @ Bistro Nguyen's, Canberra

My friend W and I had been talking about going to Bistro Nguyen's for a little while since we'd noticed it pop up in a conspicuous space in the middle of Civic. I randomly selected a night, invited a few people and hey presto. Turned out I had inadvertently selected the night of Chinese New Year so it became a little celebration of sorts.

BN has been receiving some mixed reviews on Urbanspoon so while there was some niggling reluctance, I was still keen to try it. Being the pho fiend that I am, I went for a bowl of rare beef pho and I shared a grilled beef banh mi with our friend L. The pho was good, the broth is aromatic and rich and it came in a nice big bowl. I would have liked the soup to be hotter, however. By far the worst part of the pho though was the beef. While it soft and thinly sliced it definitely tasted very funky, as in not very fresh at all. The problematic beef was even more problematic in the banh mi, which I can safely say was the worst banh mi I'd ever had. I didn't even finish my half of it; I had never before not finished a banh mi before. Firstly the bread was not very good, not very crispy like a good banh mi roll should be; there also weren't enough vegetables and herbs and the spring onion was non existent. However, again by far the worst element and the bit that just spoiled the thing completely was the beef. While there was lots of it, it was lots of very bad tasting beef. Again the beef tasted vaguely off; quite smelly and just not very fresh at all. It was also very very wet like it had been boiled rather than the good charry meat you expect in a grilled meat banh mi.

I was also a bit troubled by the service; the waitresses were rather abrupt throughout the evening and seemed very disorganised as demonstrated by their fumbling and mixups when a couple of people at the table asked about the house white. On top of that, they refused to give us the bill at the table. Fair enough they wanted us to pay at the counter and we were happy to do that, but at least give us a receipt to take to the table of 7 so we can work out how much people need to pay. We had to gestimate based on the menu but we ended up being short when we took the money up to the counter, after which time they just gave me the receipt to take back to the table. How hard is it to do that in the first instance so we can save everyone some time and hassle? Lastly, they have a $2 credit card surcharge; probably the biggest I've ever seen in a restaurant and kinda ridiculous when we were paying by Visa not Amex.

Overall don't be fooled by the cool looking decor and graphic walls, there are definitely Vietnamese restaurants with much better food and service in Canberra.