Taste of Saigon

The portions are very small, the food is so-​so, but the service is good and the ambiance is very pretty. By the food being so-​so, I mean the soup was not very flavorful and was a bit bland. The fish was not the most tender and seemed slightly overcooked. On the other hand, the shrimp rolls were fresh, delicious, and large in size. The décor was upscale, new, and modern. This is an Americanized Vietnamese restaurant that seeks to satisfy American patrons. I suppose if you’re looking for authentic Americanized-​style Vietnamese food with a modern attractive ambiance and higher priced menu, then this is your restaurant.

Lemon grass chicken was not good. Too spicy. Didn’t taste any lemon. Came with a side of broccoli that was bland and didn’t complement the dish at all

I’ve only ever gotten takeout from here and it was always prompt and cooked to perfection. Nothing was ever soggy or gross when I got home, and was packaged really well, ie no spills on the way home.
Their rice noodle dishes are simply diviiiiiiiine.

5 stars for service! The fried wontons appetizer were good, not great however the crunch and sweet and sour sauce were perfect. I wasn’t the biggest fan of my ginger chicken, the ginger and salt were overwhelming and I didn’t find it spicy at all, despite being listed as such. The sauce needed more ingredients and a greater quantity. The chicken does come with a decent amount of broccoli and carrots (not listed). Next time I’ll have to try the lemongrass and hot pepper chicken or the black pepper speciality. My mother greatly enjoyed her beef dish that came atop a bed of salad, I however found it to be too salty. The mango crème brûlée was fantastic though, truly the star of the meal, we ordered two after devouring the first. The iced coffee was good and strong, I however prefer more of a chai tea.

So we were craving for some phở soup on lazy Sunday afternoon near Rockville Town Center. The usual phở place“Phở & Roll” was closed unfortunately and we want to find another Phở place. Then, we recognize Saigon is a Vietnam location and the food has to be something related to phở. We were hesitating at the entrance about whether to get inside or not, then a man (turned out to be a customer getting his takeout) came over and asked whether it was our first time here, we said yes. Then he was like it was really good, go ahead and give a try. And we were glad we did it.
There are outside seating areas and inside, including a good size bar with various alcohol collection. We were seated near the window facing the fountain outside, it was quiet and relaxing. The phở came in small and large size, as we ordered ginger chicken as entrée to share, we could only take the small size phone. Mine is as usual the beef one. The phở was good, but not the best soup though, but I like the size, not too much, not too few. Ginger chicken was cooked right, tender with great amount taste of ginger, and this recipe is genuinely Vietnamese. However, one thing I don’t really like the young coconut juice as it was too sweet. A good young coconut juice will come with the real coconut, not a glass. I am not sure if they take the coconut meat and juice out and then put into the glass or simply create the coconut water with sugar, but not seeing the real coconut, I know, they can still improve. The price was reasonable, good for a light dinner and late lunch.

UPDATE: Don’t trust the other reviewers. If you know good Vietnamese food go elsewhere. I’m sure there’s a dish or two that a few folks like but overall move along. Nothing to see here.
Simply not good.
We ate here primarily because my buddy sucks at all things computerized. I was driving so I told him to find a decent Vietnamese place. He says here’s a place in Rockville that has 4 stars. Wow. I follow his directions — we pass Pho75 and 2 other basic Vietnamese Phở restaurants — and we end up here. What he missed is the 4-​star restaurant with a parking lot full of cars ACROSS THE STREET.
Our first clue that this is not the place for us was the fact that the menu had all of 3 Phở dishes. What?
Vietnamese coffee: Pre-​made; waaaaay too sweet; no condensed milk, all sugar.
Fried.rice with pork was ³⁄₅. Better than Panda Express but not better than most other sit down Chinese restaurants or Vietnamese restaurants for that matter.

Bun combination was 3.5÷5. The presentation was pretty good.
The summer roll (Imperial Roll) ¹⁄₅: simply crap. Inedible. The first one the waitress brought out was ripped from bottom to top. I had to send it back on principle alone. When we did get some rolls that looked reasonably edible, they tasted like I shouldn’t be eating them.
Not sure I’ll come back to verify my original opinion.

Lovely looking restaurant with a nice patio area. The service and food were ok. Had multiple dishes and some were very salty. I don’t think I’ll come back here again.

LOVE this place! Always my go-​to when I’m in the area visiting family. Black pepper chicken, caramel fish, tamarind calamari in my opinion are the best. The flavors are really unique. I can’t think of another restaurant to compare them to. This is not a sweaty phở shop. It’s really clean inside and just a nice place to eat. Check them out, thank me later ;)

New to Vietnamese food, I decided to try their Vermicelli Special Combination which has a few pieces of grilled shrimp, great tasting pork and pieces of a spring roll on a bed of noodles ($ 9.99). It comes with sauce and I was told to pour it over my dish. The pork was well seasoned and so it tasted very good. I will definitely try something different the next time I go there.
Tip: If you do carryout, they automatically add the 5 cent bag charge to your bill without asking if you have a bag or not. Be sure to have them remove it if you do have one.

Overall I would give it a «B». The ambiance is nice and the staff are helpful and freindly. The phở noodle dishes are so-​so, not very plentiful and not very taste-​full. «I want more shrimp» said one of our party, «not very much meat» said two others. One of our party got the Vermicelli Combo Special and enjoy it very much. For $ 20 per person including tip it was not bad, but certainly not a memorable dinner. We go the cranberry martinis — if there was vodka in it I couldn’t really tell, chintzy at best, just like the meals. I guessing they’re trying to squeezing a little profit out of thin servings and it shows. Not going back for a while.

Great food !! We love the whole flounder which the waiter fillets at table side! Loved the vegetarian crêpe too! Spices and flavor here are just right! Nice décor, great service and very clean!
We will be back again and again!

This place is great. I have been coming here for years. A creeper in the Rockville town center. The low traffic location keeps the place incognito. Braised beef is delicious. The phở is some of the best around. Service is definitely the best in the RTC. Don’t hesitate. Go. Eat. Be Happy.

We love this place not only for their delicious food (crab asparagus soup, Bun Thit Nuong Cha Gio –Vermicelli with Chargrilled Pork and Egg Roll etc), but also the friendly and efficient service. The prices here are also quite affordable! I love the way it is decorated, very warm and classy!
Great patio seating is also available and the restaurant is only a few steps away from the vibrant scene of Rockville Town Square! This is a great find!

Walked in and loved the décor. The low lit lighting gives it the perfect ambiance, and I love all the crevices filled with Vietnamese treasures. Also, the waiter was very kind and attentive — not in our way at all but always there when I needed a water refill. He was incredibly efficient, and so was the kitchen. They churned those dishes out in a matter of minutes, and as soon as we finished the appetizer, the entrees were on their way. I’m far too impatient a person, so I loved it.
On to what really matters: the food. We started with the veggie roll, which comes with two thin rice paper rolls filled with vermicelli, assorted vegetables, and a big ol’ chunk of tofu. You get peanut sauce on the side, which I thought had great subtle peanutty flavor mixed with what I believe was oyster sauce. I poured it all over the roll, and I could have had a whole plate of them. The sauce was necessary, though, because the tofu was very bland. I’ve ranted once or twice about bland tofu in my day, so I’ll keep it brief — there’s no excuse for serving bland tofu in a restaurant. The stuff is a sponge for flavor. Give it some!
For entrée number one, we ordered what the menu calls their specialty: the black pepper sauce with chicken (you can get it with whatever meat you’d like, though). The chicken was cut into very manageable pieces and was tender and seasoned with a healthy dose of pepper, as you’d expect from a dish with this name. It came with a large helping of broccoli as well. The real star was the sauce. I had trouble figuring out exactly what was in it, but it tasted slightly sweet, almost caramelly, which complimented the chicken surprisingly well (not to mention the egg from the fried rice I mixed it with — I wish I could get a fried rice drenched in this sauce). I would have preferred it with a bit more sauce, but it was delicious nonetheless. I think the sauce to meat ratio would please a normal person, however — the slight sweetness of it probably works better in the small dose they provide. I just like saucy dishes. I really loved the dish, but the portion was a bit small. You’ll definitely need an appetizer to leave full.
Our second dish, the shrimp saigon fried rice, was a much more generous portion. Despite the name, it’s just a basic fried rice with some veggies, but it was still good. Very fresh tasting — I appreciate fried rice that isn’t drowned in soy sauce, and this delivered. I have quite a big complaint though — the shrimp was not deveined. I realize it’s still fine to eat, but still, it’s very unappealing. It’s restaurant 101 to devein shrimp, right? And having worked in a restaurant back in the day, I know the process isn’t so time consuming as to warrant sending shrimp out in this condition. Some of the shrimp looked fine, but the vein was prominent in some pieces, which we ate around while exchanging disappointed glares.
Overall, still a nice dinner. If not for the shrimp situation, I was considering going to five stars based on the delicious peppery goodness in the chicken dish, the peanut sauce, the great service, and welcoming décor. Can’t beat the location either, right in the town square. I’ll be back.

This place very nice the waiter was nice and the food feel healthy with the veggies on the rice and the spring took was very good if was a little bit oily but good. I recommend this place and do try the signature plate very good.

I have a bit of a unique review to write for Taste of Saigon, and for Mr. Liem Tu, the manager of this establishment.
My sorority, Sigma Psi Zeta Sorority Inc., hosts a charity dinner annually and catering has long been the most difficult part of our planning process from a budgeting standpoint. As a smaller organization, we have a very limited budget for food but we usually need to cater for approximately 200 people. This poses an extreme challenge.
This year, we approached Liem and asked if he could pull something together for our dinner. He very graciously accepted and proposed a menu of vegetarian egg rolls, a mixed sauteed vegetables entrée, and the signature black pepper chicken dish. This was all done for a very conservative budget, as some of these items were generous donations from Liem.
There was some difficulty getting in contact with Liem at times, but he always pulled through, whether it was with documents for our university’s event coordinator, or with talking to me about the concerns. As a whole, he was very professional and pleasant to work with.
With Taste of Saigon being a smaller family-​owned establishment, I can certainly imagine the effort and coordination that must have gone into helping to cater this event. We had a very successful night and it would not have been so without the consideration of Liem and the rest of the Taste of Saigon staff to accommodate this special request. We received compliments on the food throughout the night, and from what I got to taste of the black pepper chicken at the end of the night, it was delicious! I will have to stop by for a second taste at the restaurant itself… and to personally thank Liem.
On behalf of the sisters of Sigma Psi Zeta Sorority, Inc. at the University of Maryland College Park, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude. You all are great!

I was seated and served in a timely manner. The server understood English well, but it took me a moment to understand what he said… He’s Spanish, go figure.
The restroom wax immaculate!!! The stal, which I did not need to use, had a glass door that was clouded for privacy, but you could see the silhouette of someone handling their business… Enough said about that.
I ordered the ginger chicken; chicken sautéed in ginger root, served with brown rice and vegetables. The plate looked like something right off a poster. The flavoring was spot on, but the meat quality of the chicken was that of carry-​out quality; not great, but they say hunger is the best spice and I was hungry!
The food and a miller light on tap for 13 $ was not bad. It was a nice, clean, quiet environment with attentive waiters and I would probably go back again and not have the ginger chicken.

It’s nice to go back to a place and try again. You want to know that your favorite comfort foods are still there, but most of all you want to see if it’s still living up to your last review. It’s update time…
Starters: The Imperial rolls are still nicely packed with lettuce, noodles, shrimp, tofu and pork. The dipping sauce with a hint of siracha it’s it nicely. The spring rolls unfortunately were a bit of a disappointment. Fried well on the outside, but still cold on the inside. After two attempts, it didn’t get any better. So, you know they were pre-​made, frozen and then fried when needed… but, frozen and not fresh.
Many of the signature dishes are still good like the papaya and shrimp salad and the Caramel fish… that still does make you want to smack your momma even though you know that her left hook will knock you out.
But two wonderful little soups made me flush today. The Hot & Sour soup and the Seafood Phở. The real winner was the hot & sour with chunks of pineapple to give it the sweetness, white pepper to give it a kick, but it’s the distinctive cumin in the soup that really gives it the core flavor.
The seafood phở was a curious endeavor at best. Normally, the stock is a combination of beef, pork, and or chicken bones then the usual assortment of spices. I would have thought that the seafood phở would have been fish stock or vegetable based to allow the seafood flavors to come through. It was the regular stock, which is still very good, but when tasting it, I ended up expecting beef, not the generous amount of shrimp, scallop and squid whose flavors didn’t really become a part of tapestry which it really could have. A minor detail at best.
It’s still nice to come back here and enjoy a nice meal even with a few quirks the food overall stands out nicely and is a treat to come back.

Their food is not at all bad, but very Americanized, nothing Viet about it. The appetizers are probably the most authentic viet dishes out of their whole menu. My brother always get their goi cuon or i think they called it imperial rolls and they taste like others imperial rolls i had. I like their crispy calamari. The fried wontons are okay, really dry.
For the entrees, I usually get the vietnamese steak — only because I like steak, there’s nothing viet about it. My brother love their vermicelli combination dish. It’s really good though, the meat in it is amazing! My friend got the Saigon Crêpe and it was really bad. It was too soft and nothing like the authentic viet crêpe supposed to be. The Chicken with Rice in a Hot Pot was really bland, there was no flavor to it. & Their Bo Luc Lac (I think it’s called shaky beef? on their menu) is such a rip off. It was one of the priciest dishes on the menu and it was not worth it. A big plate filled with vegetables & just a couples cubes of beef. I was kind of dissapointed.
The service was good, the waiters were friendly and nice. Overall, the food is decent, but if you’re looking for real authentic taste of Saigon, you probably won’t find it here.

Went here for lunch with a large of coworkers for my boss’ birthday. We made reservations before hand, and they were easily able to accommodate 25 people (but the restaurant definitely wasn’t too busy anyhow). I think the restaurant moved, so it was a bit hard for some people to find. It’s currently located across the street from the Rockville library. The parking garage is steps away which comes in handy ($ 1/​hr).
I decided to order off the Restaurant menu, and boy was it a good deal! For $ 10 (not including tax and tip or a drink), I ordered a small wonton soup (regularly $ 5.99) and the vermicelli special combination (regularly $ 9.99). The wonton soup was very tasty. The wontons were delicious, and the broth was very flavorful. This soup was pretty huge for an appetizer, so make sure you save room for your main course. The vermicelli special combination was yummy! This was my first time eating noodles dry, and boy was I not disappointed! The bed of noodles came with grilled shrimp, pork, a spring roll, and some sauce to put on the noodles. Everything I ate here was DELICIOUS!
The wait staff was pretty courtesy and our food was brought out in a timely manner. I’d come back again. Yum yum yum!