Indochine Pavilion

I’ve always enjoyed this place. Have driven 25 minutes out of my way on many occasions to eat their lunch buffet.
The selection isn’t enormous, but I’ve always greatly enjoyed the food and dining experience. I’ve been to one other Thai place on Chapel Street and didn’t like it nearly as much.

Oh my… this place SUCKS. my food was cold, unsavory. how can you go wrong with pad thai and pineapple fried rice? i have no idea how it happened. the tofu in the tofu dish was hard and tasted like fake chicken. fake CHICKEN not even fake tofu. didn’t even finish half.

Indochine is one of many mediocre Thai restaurants on Chapel Street. That said, Indochine also has some Vietnamese offerings.
I had a basil stir-​fry with tofu. Vegans and vegetarians beware: most of the «vegetarian» dishes here contain oyster sauce so make sure to specify your requirements when you order. As I’m a vegan, I always tell them, «no fish sauce, no oyster sauce and no egg.»
(Also, I’ve given up on pretty much all curries, as 98% of curries in American Thai restaurants have shrimp paste pre-​mixed and cannot be modified, even if they’re labeled as «vegetarian.»)
I liked the large portion size but the taste of the dish left me underwhelmed. It was a pretty bland and simple stir-​fry and nothing else.
The service was friendly if not particularly fast. The interior has a sickly neon glow thanks to questionable lighting choices; this is not the best place to take a date.

I only ate here once, and it was during their lunch buffet.
I sampled a bit of everything they had to offer, and the food left me with no desire to return. Any of the other 4 Thai restaurants on the block are much better than the food that I ate here.
All of the chicken dishes seemed to have dark meat only, and it was very chewy/​rubbery.
The food was cheap, but I would rather spend a couple more bucks elsewhere on the block.

This review is based on their lunch cart on Science Hill near the Yale School of Management. Above all, the cheap prices stood out — 3.50 for 1 item, 4.75 for 2 and 5 for 3. The portions are huge and the food is pretty tasty. It’s probably so cheap because there is hardly any meat or eggs (at least in the pad thai and drunken noodle), but, when I need a quick, cheap bite between classes and don’t want to trek back to my apartment, this would fit the bill. I hope to try out the other carts soon.

I started hitting up Indochine when in Middle School because it was right across the street from the comic book shop. As a growing boy it was one of my first experiences with an all you can eat buffet.
Its an eclectic SouthEast Asian fare (Thai, Vietnamise, etc). They have the Drunken Noodles, the Pad Thai, that coconut/​curry rice and other assorted vegi goodies for the veg in you. They got the nice Singha beer libation to wash it down also.
I personally like the atmosphere. It’s dimly lighted with pics and items from the far east all over. When I walk into it I feel that they are rocking the atmosphere for their benefit and not the ‘normal american comfortability factor.’ There is great service also. You aren’t going to be ‘ignored.’

Nothing particularly memorable. I was excited to go because I read that it had good cheap Phở, and I had been craving it for a while. It wasn’t terrible, but, I never went back for it again.
My husband got some kind of fish mango curry thing, which he said was good, but again, he never went back for it again.
Like I said, nothing memorable.

I think I got food poisoning from the Fisherman’s Special.

Indochine Pavillion is one of the many ethnic restaurants gracing Chapel St. It’s certainly not a particularly attractive place but then most restaurants in that area exist because of the food and not aesthetics.
I go there primary because of the lunch buffet and whenever I go to a buffet I put things in perspective; the food is not going to be as good as a regular meal. A buffet is always a compromise, not too spicy and nothing too exotic.
The buffet at Indochine has a decent selection of traditional, or at least what I call traditional Vietnamese food. Pad Thai, drunken noodle, spring rolls and the like. Not great but for a lunch buffet at a cheap price not bad. The service has always been friendly and attentive. Indochine Pavilion is certainly not the best Vietnamese food in the area but for a place to fill up quickly at a good price it’s lunch buffet is pretty damn good.

Indochine is sort of an eclectic place– I’m not sure why they have a burrito cart on the corners of Elm and High competing against La Carreta, but their restaurant is a little hidden gem. It may not be as frequented as Thai Taste and its neighbors on Chapel, but my boyfriend and I love this place for their friendly service, large portions, and well-​seasoned foods. Our favorites include the Pad Thai and the panang and green curries. I can’t speak for the other cuisines, dishes or the buffet, but I’ve had very yummy experiences here.

Price: Excellent. Very cheap. Their portions are big… although the shrimp spring roll lacked much shrimp. But there was enough wilted veggies and noodles inside. At least you can get very full w/​very little money.
Food: I can make the same things using left overs. Ingredients don’t look very fresh. The only dish I somewhat enjoyed was their chicken w/​lemon grass. Their noodle soup comes with THICK slices of beef. Not what I had in mind.
Service: Excellent. The server was very attentive and filled my water cup very often.
Selection: O.K. There’s enough, but each dish lacks the flavour I’m craving for.
Ambience: Fair to good. I liked reading the cook books they had laid out. Maybe I can create a better Vietnamese dish at home with the suggestions given in their cookbooks.
Total: I’d give two and a half stars. Possibly three ONLY because of the hard working servers there.

Picked up take-​out there the other night and was disappointed to find that the food in my bag didn’t quite resemble what was described on the menu. I ordered «Lemon Chicken on Rice Vermicelli» which, according to the menu (and other Vietnamese restaurants) should contain grilled chicken, rice vermicelli, lettuce, carrot, bean sprouts, cukes, cilantro, and sauce. In my bag: a clump of overcooked rice noodles, some lettuce, a few carrot curls, and some dry grilled chicken strips. Not a bean sprout, cuke, or cilantro leaf in sight. Didn’t even finish that dish. I also ordered the «Potak» soup, which is described as «assorted seafood with mushroom, tomato, lime juice and onion in lemon grass-​ginger broth.» My description: a hunk of fake crabmeat, one overcooked shrimp, and a gazillion button mushrooms in a salty lemon-​grass broth. Blech! And how could I forget the bubble tea? I ordered a cup of bubble tea (of which I am usually a huge fan) and I heard the waitress preparing it behind the counter. It sounded like a whirring blender was involved, and sure enough, when i took the first sip, all of the tapioca «bubbles» had been blended into smithereens. Aren’t the chewy «bubbles» the whole point of bubble tea? At least I thought they were! Well, needless to say, I will never set foot in that place again. A few other random thoughts: the restaurant had a weird smell, the blacklit bathroom made me feel like I was in on a CSI investigation. Also, I should have known the food was bad when I observed the waitress’s son (?) eating saltines and cheese in a can.

Cheap, but greasy and not the best you can find, even in New Haven…
I ordered the drunken noodles. They were fine except for two things: HUGE chunks of nearly raw onions (yuck!). And HUGE slabs of dry chicken breast (my jaw feels tired just thinking about that chicken).
Basically, Indochine is there and it’s cheap. But I am afraid of the buffet.
By the way, do you think this review stands a chance at winning the Most Useless Review Award?

This place seemed a little bit lacking on the sanitation and maintenance. It was a hot day and there was a single A/​C unit over the door which was leaking, and obviously pushed beyond capacity because the inside was humid and only slightly cooler than the outdoors. It wasn’t particularly dirty but there was a more serious issue that I will describe below.
The menu seemed to be bridging too many types of cuisines at once: Thai, Vietnamese, Laos. The menu had a fair amount of selection, but when the food arrived, it didn’t measure up. The food was relatively fresh, but the flavours were not vibrant or interesting enough. It also wasn’t terribly authentic: I ordered phở, and it was more like pseudo-​phở, vegetables served in the soup not on the side, and not enough vegetables.
The worst aspect of this place is that when my water was refilled, it tasted like someone had put some spic-​n-​span or some similar cleaning solution in it. I’m not quite sure how this happened but I found it rather disturbing and it would convince me to not go back.
Service was minimal; although it was a sit-​down restaurant, the waitress was not particularly attentive, did not check in on us, and was slow to bring us the check.
The prices? Very reasonable. There’s a very cheap lunch buffet, which I did not try (especially given that I got a vibe of general sketchiness). But low prices aren’t enough to lure me in, especially when the sanitation standards are too low.