Vietnam House Restaurant.

Vietnam House Restaurant

The card ran two starters, ten mains and no desserts when The Scotsman ate here in 20122, and The List named the reason: the kitchen is too small to carry anything longer.1

Why go

Nguyen learned to cook in her parents' restaurant in Vietnam, and she runs this room the way a small kitchen forces you to: she preps the food, hands it to a chef to cook, and works the floor herself.1 The List's reviewer put the whole format down to the room. Recognising that the place isn't best geared towards extensive production, and in order to keep prep time down, Nguyen has created a modest menu of meal-sized Vietnamese street foods. The route to the bathroom runs through the kitchen, which makes it an open kitchen by accident of the floorplan. Drink is BYO: The Scotsman paid GBP 1 corkage in 2012 and the owner brought glasses and a jug of water over.2 The two published accounts of the pho disagree on the broth, and the disagreement is worth carrying. The Scotsman found it thin but full of flavour and depth; The List describes the same soup here served in a rich and well-seasoned stock.1 A second address was announced for June 2019, Pho Viet at 15 Dalry Road, a few hundred meters away in the same pocket of the West End, and it now holds its own FSA registration.3 This entry is the Grove Street original.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the pho, and share it. It arrives with a substantial side plate of bean sprouts, fresh mint, chopped chiles and lime wedges to build it with, and The Scotsman found the bowl looked big enough to share and then turned out to be too much in one sitting.2
• Order: the fried spring rolls, cha gio on the card. The List described thick, perfectly wrapped cylinders of wonton-style pastry containing finely chopped shrimp and vermicelli noodles with a chunky peanut sauce.1 Wonton pastry gives a harder, blistered fry than the rice paper most kitchens reach for. The fresh ones, goi cuon, are where a critic pushed back: The Scotsman called them lovely and fresh, if a tad over-noodled.2
• Order: one of the two claypot dishes if the table has three people, com ka kho, an earthenware pot of braised fish in ginger and capsicum, and thit theo kho, braised pork in a pepper and caramel sauce.1 Kho is the caramel braise, sugar cooked dark before the liquid goes in, and it is what makes the pork taste of more than pepper.
• Order: the Vietnamese coffee to finish, a very strong filter cup made over condensed milk.1
• Avoid: arriving as a group of six. The Scotsman counted six tables2 and The List counted five1, and there is nowhere to stand while you wait.

What locals & experts say

• The Scotsman (2012) closed its review on the whole package and priced the compliment carefully: With friendly service, healthy food and a laidback attitude we agreed it was one of the most enjoyable meals we had had in Edinburgh. No fuss or pomp and easy on the pocket.2 The piece carries the masthead byline and no writer's name.
• The List made the case in two sentences and then named the risk. Now the capital has its own Vietnamese restaurant. Not only that, but a very good one too. Its own summary line reads + Quality and service that deserves to be a hit against − Once known, it will surely outgrow the space.1 The same piece is where the book-ahead advice comes from: you should book ahead if you want to try the place out.
• Nga Nguyen, to the Edinburgh Evening News (2019), on why the family took a second site: after nine years I know Edinburgh people love Vietnamese so we've decided to expand… I honestly feel so happy that I can bring the food of my country here.3
• The gap is worth stating. Both reviews above are more than a decade old, and nobody has written about this restaurant since June 2019. The room is open, it holds a current FSA registration and a live site, and no critic has judged the cooking in seven years.

Good to know

• Booking: worth doing, and worth doing early.
• Drink: BYO, on the one visit anybody wrote up. A higher corkage than the 2012 pound circulates online with nothing behind it, so take a bottle and ask at the door.
• Price: cheap. The 2012 card ran GBP 6.50 for spring rolls and GBP 6.95 for a bowl of pho, and nobody has published a price since.
• Hours: the venue publishes 11am to 10pm Monday and Wednesday to Sunday, last orders at 9pm, and closed Tuesday.4 A five-table room with one dark day is the fact most likely to waste a trip.
• The owner's name: the Edinburgh Evening News names her Nga Nguyen and quotes her directly; The List calls her Jodie Nguyen. Nothing published resolves the two.
• Age: the venue opened around 2009 or 2010. The Evening News dated it in 2019 as "nearly ten years after first opening" and the owner said nine years in the same piece, which brackets it without pinning it.
• Getting there: Grove Street runs off Morrison Street, a few minutes east of Haymarket station and the tram stop.
• Hygiene: Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass, inspected 8 January 2024, FHRSID 72101. Nineteen months old, a pass, with nothing pending.6
• Sites: two addresses in this family's hands. Vietnam House is 1-3 Grove Street. Pho Viet at 15 Dalry Road is a different premises with its own register entry, FHRSID 1680274, Pass, inspected 28 November 2023.5

Verdict

listed — Nga Nguyen learned to cook in her parents' restaurant in Vietnam, she preps the food herself and hands it to a chef, and the card runs two starters and ten mains because that is what the kitchen can physically carry. Writing a menu from a constraint is the most interesting decision in the building, and two reviewers liked what came out of it. The Scotsman in 2012 said the pho broth was thin but full of flavour and depth with the ratio of noodles to meat perfect. The List called it a very good Vietnamese restaurant and warned in its own summary that once known it would outgrow the space. Both verdicts are over a decade old, both are unbylined, and nobody has written a word about this business since June 2019. There is no published price and nothing that confirms the same hands are on the line now that the family also runs Pho Viet on Dalry Road. Set that against Kebab Mahal, which holds could-visit on a 2009 review: that room is corroborated by a 2015 Time Out entry and a 2023 award report, so its continuity is on the record. This one has seven years of silence. The rung follows the record and says nothing about the wok. Keep the pin, take a bottle, because the one recorded visit paid corkage and drank its own wine, book because five tables is five tables, and expect the short card the old reviews describe.