Viet Tofu

This deli can, at times, adequately satisfy a Vietnamese food fix, however, it’s not an establishment I would go out of the way for. Lots of both hits and misses in my opinion:
*****
I. FOOD & DRINK
This is a grab-​and-​go kind-​of-​place. They have a decent selection of rice plates, noodle salads, fried goodies, banh mis, and desserts. Most noms are A-​OK, however, there are a few highlights and lowlights that stuck out in my mind:
Pros:
*Goi Tom: It’s a Vietnamese salad comprised of choyote, cabbage, pork cartilage, herbs, and carrots. Like with most dishes, it comes with a fish sauce dressing. My lady’s favorite.
*Banh Beo: Tiny rice crepes with a dimple of mung bean, dried shrimp, and shallots topped. Add fish sauce, too. Pretty good.
*Banh Cuon: Rolled rice crepes with dried, fried onion, cilantro, shallots, and slices of cha lua (Vietnamese bologne). Solid as well. (Their cha lua in general is pretty good.0
Cons:
*Banh Xeo: Although I haven’t eaten it, I’m pretty sure this yellow crêpe with bean sprouts and other fixings in the middle can’t be good if it’s sitting out in the open.
*Café Sua Da: Vietnamese coffee is very watered down and not strong.
*Overall quality: Not sure how long some of eats have been sitting out for.
II. SERVICE
There’s a really nice family working behind the counter. They might yell at each other, occasionally, but that means it’s legit. lol.
III. ATMOSPHERE/​DÉCOR
Really casual, old school joint. No frills. They could do a better job at mopping up the floors.
IV. PRICES
So. Freaking. Affordable. They’re at the right price point.
V. OVERALL
Not my favorite place to get Vietnamese eats, but worth dropping by if it’s convenient for you.

This place is seriously bad. Don’t get it confused with VN Tofu located on Jimmy Carter Blvd. VN tofu food is fresh and delicious. This place is nowhere near good. I only come here because it’s close but seriously, driving the extra miles to VN Tofu is so worth it.
Food here is mediocre and not sure how fresh it is. Some of the items look like leftovers from prior days. They have limited selection such as egg rolls, fried tofu, sticky rice, spring rolls. It’s doesn’t look like food gets replenished through out the day. I’ve sampled a bit of each and it’s really a hit or miss. On top of that the place is not really clean. I do enjoy the nouc mia (freshly pressed sugar cane juice) but hey you can’t mess that up.

We go here almost every week. Great place to pick up ready to eat Vietnamese food. They have rice plates, spring rolls, egg rolls, banh mi and all kinds of snacks and dessert. They make their own tofu here as well as soy milk. I tend to grab some of the fried tofu here, some hot tofu snack (behind the counter). They have great banh khot, fried spring rolls, bo la lot, banh bot loc, spring rolls and delicious lemongrass tofu.
Definitely a spot to check out if you’re in the Buford Hwy area.
If you like the stuff they sell here, try VN Tofu off Jimmy Carter blvd. Bigger place and more selection of items.
I give it 3 stars because the place can be a bit cleaner and also some of the items like banh xeo (Vietnamese pancake) is out in the open with no cover. I understand that it’s to keep it crispy but it doesn’t seem sanitary.

Viet prepared and fast food fresh and huge selection!
Bahn Xeo– crepes, perfect, huge portions and fresh!
The best red bean balls in sesame.
FRESH soymilk and all the sweet rice and meatballs and fish ham and all the goodies you want, homestyle.
They do not speak English well, but go for it, explore new foods!
I have a goal to go 2/​x a month to try something new and always get red bean and coconut sesame bean ball whenever I drive down Buford.
I love this place!

The tofu with ginger (Tau hu nuoc duong), prepared fresh, is excellent. It is served in a huge styrofoam cup at a great price. It is warm, but it taste really good when it is chilled in the refrigerator as well. The spring rolls, desserts, and pork at Viet Tofu are great too. The owners at Viet Tofu are very nice and it is one of my favorite places on Buford Highway.

CHE (VIETNAMESE DESSERT)
I come here for Vietnamese desserts, mostly Che Bap (corn dessert), and Che Thach Nhan (jackfruit longan and jelly with milk).
This is the only place I’ve found here in Atlanta that has these desserts so I frequent them a lot. They are all in one place in a fridge and I can take my picking. The sizes are good and they add coconut milk when you go to pay.
CHE BAP [sweet corn dessert]
This is by far, my favorite dessert. They come in small cups, great for on the go and individual sizes. I like to buy a few for the week and heat them as I go.
BANH CAM
I always pick up a few of these sesame balls with mungbean or red bean inside. I like the mung bean better only because I grew up eating them and I love them. These can get a little greasy so I use a paper napkin to squeeze them flat and then just eat them like a flat cake.

This place does have some decent items like their tofu pudding, but I am very tired of getting expired food from this establishment. They are a little too business minded pushing stuff on you as you buy things from them and they keep OLD, SPOILED food in their refrigerator and sell it to you as if it’s good. I’ve wasted a lot of money buying their spoiled merchandise over 3 – 4 different encounters (bad soy milk, bad tofu stew from the refrigerator, stale/​dry sesame balls, etc.) and I don’t have the time to go back there to bring it to their attention. They only get business because they have no competitor nearby but they definitely could do better and have a much better business ethic like keeping track of how old their merchandise is. Here’s a novel idea – maybe they could put an expiration date on their soy milk and other cooked products so they know when to dispose of expired items.

I believe that there was a change in ownership. Prices have been raised slightly and they no longer sell certain items like some of the cold desserts and nuoc mam. Good luck getting any fresh bread after noon now. I used to be able to still buy bread as late as 4pm. I just read other reviews about failing their latest inspection. Had I known this I wouldn’t have bothered buying anything right now.

Received 62 (FAIL) on latest food inspection. My advice is to tell your enemies to eat here.

Nope, never again.
I purchased some egg rolls, banh beo and banh gio… none of it edible. an egg roll I ate had a rock in it. Yes, a rock. I was chewing and chomped on something extremely hard. I thought maybe it was a really hard peppercorn, but no, it was a pebble.
As for the banh gio and banh beo, I guess I should’ve come by earlier in the day to buy fresher food. But while they’re open, isn’t it their responsibility to make sure the food hasn’t turned? Ugh. I am close to giving up on the Buford Hwy area.

I was having a massive craving attack for some eggrolls as well as some Asian sweets so I stopped by after work on Sunday. Most of the fried foods liked a bit dry, but I figured a quick nuke bath with a cup of water would wake them up so I grabbed 2 shrimp and 2 pork eggrolls along with a corn pudding. I saw that they had the rolled rice noodles with pork so I asked the guy behind the counter if he had any. He nods, goes to the kitchen and tells me ok, 5 minutes?
Sure, I got time thinking I was going to get some fresh ones.
In the meantime I walk around and bit more and examine the empty shelves. When the guy calls out that my order was ready, I looked down to see the wrong dish. Instead of the wrapped shrimp noodles, I see vermicili with steamed shrimp, pork and an eggroll. I tell the guy its the wrong dish, he looks back to the kitchen and says a few words in Vietnamese. It goes back and forth for a bit before I just interrupt with an, fine, I’ll go ahead and take it cause obviously me getting what I wanted was too big of an obstacle for them.
SO and I ate the eggrolls and they tasted ok although a bit dried out from baking under the heat lamps. But later that night, we were taking turns sitting on the porcelain toilet. He claimed that it was from the eggrolls, but I didn’t believe him. So I took took the shrimp vermicilli dish for lunch and yep, same effect. Conclusion, should’a checked the health score (a 74) before I take a bite. I paid way too much for that wrong dish.

This is my favorite Banh Mi bakery on Buford highway.
This place is a Vietnamese bakery, prepared food take away. They have different types of tofu, Soymilk, boiled peanuts, and other popular Vietnamese foods.
This is not a restaurant.

I always used to buy Banh Mi from here. The Banh Mi is good here. My wife, originally from Vietnam, used to always enjoy the Banh Mi from here.

I’m not sure how this place received such high reviews. I stopped in earlier this evening after discovering Quoc Huong is closed Thursdays. I ordered six of their special combo bahn mi’s (the standard buy 5, get 1 free). At home, I opened up the sandwiches after my better half told me there was barely any meat in the one he’d eaten. I really can’t describe how disappointed I was at what I saw. The few pieces of meat were scant. The sandwiches also didn’t have pâté and the pigs ear ham that traditional banh mi’s have. The bread was stale, at least a day or two old. Most pitiful banh mi’s I’ve ever seen. There are too many other good sandwich shops out there to ever return to this one.
I’d return the sandwiches, but they are only $ 2.50 each… not worth my time.

The name says it all. They specialize in TOFU (dau hu) items and fresh made soy milk (sua dau nành).
The family and I use to come here a lot, but there are places that opened closer so we stopped coming here. This is a small shop and offers other items such as Vietnamese desserts and pastries. They have fro-​yo here as well. Tried it once, but didn’t hit the spot.
Try the place out and see if you like it. :)

I’m a huge Tofu freak (I hope I don’t die with the mass amount of Tofu I consume) This place is a short walk from work — otherwise I would not have known you could actually buy fried tofu pieces?!
So yeah, 6 pieces Lemongrass/​Chili flavored tofu = 1.00, Reg Fried Tofu 8 pcs = 1.00, Big logs (logs? Rectangles of it?) are like 1.00-ish
They have a lot of other flavors and other things they sell but since a lot of stuff has pork in it, I won’t venture out of the tofu section.
All in all, it’s a pretty good effin deal on Tofu if you want to make stir fry tonight or want to snack on tofu pieces. I don’t really favor the Lemongrass/​Chili flavor anymore. I just get regular fried.

Stopped by with the roomie since she was making two of my second favorite Viet foods :]
Don’t know too much since I’m not Vietnamese, but… she complained A LOT about the place. Apparently, it was really expensive, compared the Hoa Binh next door.
They had plenty of stuff though. Food items, desserts, candy, etc.
But. based on her complaints of this place, I doubt we’d be back.

Viet Tofu looks like a cool place. You can get all sorts of Vietnamese goodies for cheap. For example, you can get Banh Mi for $ 2.50. Then again, that is the competitive price for a good Banh Mi in Atlanta.
I only tried their Banh Mi, and I’m going to write this review based on the Banh Mi alone. So far, I had Banh Mi from the three big Banh Mi places: Lee’s, Quoc Huong, and Viet Tofu. I like the Viet Tofu the least.
Sure, Viet Tofu’s Banh Mi better than the crap you can get at I Luv Phở or Phở 24, but I don’t consider it better than Lee’s or Quoc. First, the bread tastes stale and hard. Also, I don’t think they put that much meat in the Banh Mi. I felt like I was just eating the bread. They also have a slight kick to it. But without the savory taste of the meat, I felt the Banh Mi was lacking.
I would love to come back and try it again. Also, their market has some delicious looking stuff I would love to try.

Thanks to Unilocaler Marty J. and friends for hosting Saturday’s «Banh Mi Off» between Viet Tofu, Lee’s Bakery, and Quoc Huong. This was a banh mi blind taste test conducted by about a dozen eaters. Eight pork banh mis were purchased from each of the three stores and anonymously labeled as contestants 1, 2, and 3. After sampling all three banh mis, each of us gave them rankings according to best bread, meat, vegetables, and overall.
Marty and I were the only two who selected Viet Tofu as our favorite for best overall, so I decided to update my review of Viet Tofu with the results rather than posting an update for each store. Before the event began, I suggested Huy’s Sandwich be added to the mix (they make a pretty awesome banh mi which can stand up to the best of them), but I think these folks wanted to keep it closer to town.
According to the final tally, winner for best overall banh mi:
1. Lee’s Bakery
2. Viet Tofu
3. Quoc Huong
There was a three-​way tie for best bread and Lee’s also won best meat and best veggies. I personally voted Viet Tofu the best in each category (once again, nobody knew the identity of each sandwich).
It was a lot of fun trying to guess which store each sandwich came from. I think most of us accurately predicted Quoc Huong because its sandwiches were the greasiest. I mistook Lee’s sandwich for Viet Tofu.
It came as a surprise to us that Quoc Huong finished last because many consider them as having the best banh mi in Atlanta. Viet Tofu came out of nowhere and, as the dark horse, impressed a lot of us. Both Quoc Huong and Viet Tofu’s banh mis use copious amounts of butter.
It should be noted that Lee’s Bakery used BBQ roast pork while the others were steamed. This gave Lee’s a decided advantage, so the playing field was not exactly even. The people who picked up the sandwiches tried their best to be consistent. In the end, it didn’t really matter because all three shops make good sandwiches, IMO.

This is a great place to go if you are on the run and in need of a quick meal and my second favorite place for Banh mi.
Walking in you are faced with an assortment of goodies to choose from, grab a basket and start looking if something grabs your attention go ahead and try it, you can afford to experiment here .

Steamed chicken buns, Basil rolls, Fried Chicken (half’s or whole), Pork & Shrimp vermicelli with herbs, Flavored Rice puddings, Sausage, Sticky rice, Soy milk and a Tofu bar, these are only a few of the Items to choose from .
Sandwiches here are yummy, filled with meat, veggies, jalapeño’ s and cilantro. If you want one buy two, one for the ride home and a snack for later you will be glad you did .
Don’t forget to try the fresh Sugar cane juice it is so refreshing especially on these Hot Summer days .
Make sure you get there before 7:30 p.m. for sandwiches or you may miss out, once they start tearing it down that’s it until tomorrow.