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This is definitely a favourite of mine, authentic and inexpensive. I still think this is the best place for Vietnamese pho in London, having tried several others around London, and good value as the dishes are a substantial size, and feels bottomless. I have been coming here regularly, especially for their summer roll, it's the best too, with the slightly chili, peanut/plum sauce to dip into, heaven! Although, it's a pity their size seems to have slightly shrunk in recent years, but I have not found anywhere that does this particular sauce, so have to come back again and again, because the sauce is the right tangy-ness, and not fish oil like other places uses, nor plum sauce that is use for Peking Duck, or aromatic duck. I also especially love the mix of lean rare beef and well done marbled beef with the pho, which comes with a piping hot soup, note "piping" hot as so many places seems not to understand the word "piping". Even the cup of hot water or pot of green tea comes so hot that it almost burns your tongue, like a good cup of coffee or tea, which is just short of burning your tongue. The green tea is also good here as it is flavoured with roasted rice. Another dish that is always good is the vermicelli noodles with sweet stir-fried beef served with a refreshing salad. The taste of the hot and the cold is sublime. I miss their Vietnamese sliced sausages which they do not do anymore. I love the simple, no decor, cream painted walls dining room. It is just one big room, and tables laid out canteen style. The tables are higher than most normal tables, which is probably what a child feels sitting at an adult table, but I like that, as you do not have to stoop so low to eat from the bowls. In the summer when they throw open the floor to ceiling windows, and the soft white curtains billowing gently in the wind, it is so romantic and dreamy. A fair walk from Surrey Quays DLR or Canada Waters Tube Station as it is located at the far end of Surrey Quays Shopping Centre, but well worth traipsing all the way down into South London. There is ample free parking if driving.
Cafe East. Very properly named since it's WAYYYY east. I got out of the station at Surrey Quays and started following my maps to Cafe East. For a second I thought I was back in America. What is this? A parking lot?! Oh. My. God. It was a legit parking lot. Like you know, where you could park like a lot of cars. Whoa. That's how far East I was... Anyway, Cafe East is all the way in the corner. Away from the big building. It took me a while to find it. When we finally got in there, I was surprised. This was like some secret Asian hideout. The restaurant was full of Asians! And you know what that means... this place was legit. The menu was limited to pho, a few appetizers, and a few rice dishes. I ordered pho and I have to say that it was the best pho I've had all year in London. It still doesn't hold a torch to the pho in Cali, but it was pretty damn close. Service is just what you'd expect from a traditional Asian restaurant. They'll ignore you until you flag one down. It's a bit of a trek to get there from Central London, but if you're looking for pho that's the real deal, Cafe East is the place to go.
this used to be a small cafe on evelyn street in deptford and seating only 25 or so people. but it's cult following resulted in long queues and culminated in this new location which can accommodate more than 100 people in one seating! when i went for dinner tonight it was packed! and the tables turned over a couple of times whilst we were still enjoying our dinner. unpretentious vietnamese food served with the freshest ingredients. the menu is deliberately limited so as to deliver on fast and good staple vietnamese cuisine. we had 2 starters. firstly the banh cuon, which was vietnamese steamed pastry(cheung fun like) filled with chinese mushrooms and minced pork, topped with vietnamese meat loaf, poached bean sprouts and fried shallots, with a homemade dipping sauce. the pastry was thin and soft whilst the bean sprouts and shallots added a crunchy texture to the dish. nice woody mushroom tasting pork filling balanced delicately with the slightly sweet fish sauce. the other starter was goi cuon, fresh summer roll, with prawn, pork, herb salad and vermicelli rice noodles plus a well proportioned peanut, hoisin and chilli dipping sauce. a prawn and pork combination with fresh herby undertones. the dipping sauce pushed it over the edge with it's kick! as for the main, i went with the bun bo xao. a warm vermicelli salad with herb, pickled carrot, bean sprouts, fried shallots and peanuts mixed with stir fried beef and homemade fish sauce. as flawless in authenticity and as generous in portion as it can be! we also had their iced coffee which was strong and sweet but without the normal dripping apparatus. dessert for me was an icy coconut cream mixture with sweet upsized red bean and chewy green jelly. service was efficient and prices were very affordable. the owner is very hands on and a real perfectionist at work. ample free parking pretty much tipped in favour of this viet joint over those on kingsland road!
If I were rating this only on the food, I would probably give this a 3.5. However, the food was very much overpriced, especially for the quality- £35+ pounds for a noodle soup, 2 apps, and 2 non-alcoholic drinks is a bit much. The noodle soup (bun bo hue) was good, but nothing to write home about. I wasn't a fan of the Vietnamese summer roll or the bicuon. They were stuck together, the pork was flavorless, and you get a thin slice of shrimp (problably 1 whole shrimp total in each roll). We asked for water since the sauce was a bit too spicy for us, but even after ordering a soymilk and an iced coffee for almost £10, the store refused to serve tap water. I've never had an instance where a restaurant in London refuses to serve water, that's crazy. The location was also difficult to access without a car. We arrived at the location via Google maps instructions, but there was a sign posted on the door to use another entrance. This other entrance ended up being a 10 minute walk since you had to go around a long fence. Don't plan on visiting here again, will stick with cafe mama pho.
Probably the best Vietnamese restaurant in the UK and probably best one outside Vietnam. I was lucky that I moved in to Rotherhithe otherwise maybe I would read somewhere about it but never would bother to visit. It's hard to find this gem. The location is rather hidden for someone that is not from the area. It's basically a building on a huge Odeon Cinema and bowling parking. You either walk here if you are a local, drive, come by bus from London Bridge or take the tube to Canada Water and walk again. So I have been coming here over the years when it just opened here. You can still see most of the original staff working here which is a good sign. The place is closed on Tuesdays and just until recently you could only pay cash and there was just one cash machine around which sometimes was empty. These days they accept cards so a big plus and makes my life easier. The place does not look much, more of a cafeteria then some of these Asian hipster paces in central London or Shoreditch. It gets busy! So arrive early as the queues are long or arrive late as usually after 9PM you can find places. Once I had to wait 40 min for a seat, but believe me it's worth it! The service is quick the card is short divided into starters, pho based soups, noodle dishes or rice dishes. There is no alcohol being served. The starters are wonderful, I love their spring rolls with meat loaf on top and crispy onion. For the mains I do usually go for the rice and pork chop with shredded pork skin which is just simply amazing!!! The other option is Vietnamese curry with chicken. Great stuff! Pho is always my favourite during winter, clear rich broth with tender beef. To summarize you want find a better simple Vietnamese food in London. Highly recommended.
Great for... Large parties, Generous portions! Quick service. But best of all.... Really good food! For good food I will put up with the curt snappy servers because that's ok I know that's just part of your efficient asian nature. Slightly stereotyping but I'm allowed. =P Best Pho in London thus far, fast and Hot! Lovin' it!
I can't love this place. There is no sauce on the tables and I can't take a pho place that does not offer tripe/tendon seriously. Pho dac biet should never be beef, chicken, shrimp. The banh cuon was good, and probably the only reason to come here over another Vietnamese place. I also had the bun thit nuong cha gio and it was fairly standard. I wish there was a bottle of sriracha on the table because I love turning my vermicelli red. A trek to get out to, but walking through the parking lot of a dead strip mall is pretty cool. I'd rather get my pho fixin' at Song Que.
Went to cafe east for a quick late Saturday night meal. Since my last visit of over a year ago the standard of the food has declined and portion sizes reduced. We both chose the combination Pho consisting of a few pieces of tough boiler chicken, 2 prawns and a few scraps of beef. The beef broth did not taste of beef at all it just tasted sweet as if vast amounts of sugar had been used for the soup! Both the spicy and non-spicy versions tasted sweet! The noodles were rehydrated dried noodles, cafe east used to serve fresh noodles. Sadly the quality of ingredients seems to have deteriorated to achieve cost savings. For decent Pho and better customer service go to Mama Pho in Surrey Quays at least they do not charge for takeaway containers and the menu is virtually identical. One improvement at cafe east is that they now accept credit cards for transactions above £10.
Cafe East, sooo yummy. When you hear people talk about Vietnamese food in East London, they will inevitably say, 1) Mama Pho or 2) Cafe East. Why? Because it tastes so nice, it's easy to get to (close to Canada Water and Surrey Quays station), it has parking outside, and it's close to other shopping places and a bowling alley and a cinema. Really??? The menu doesn't change much. Not seen any seasonal offerings, so you know exactly what you are going to get here. My favourite dish is the Bun Ga Nuong - Fine vermicelli noodles topped with crispy chicken. Served with cucumber, herb salad, pickled carrots, molly, peanuts and fish sauce. It looks like it's going to be dry noodles, but it really isn't. You have delicious sauce to pour over it, and have fun mixing the ingredients and it tastes just amazing. Order a sweet drink in the form of Sam Bo Luong and I guarantee you will come back again. The lesser aspect is the queuing. If you come here around 7pm at night it will be packed. If you come here a the weekend it will be packed and you will have to wait. Phone reception is funny inside and sometimes you will not get any. The portions have also gotten slightly smaller in recent years and the prices more expensive. Oh well, it still tastes good!!
Authentic Vietnamese food - the rice wrap with Vietnamese spam is one of the must-haves and the spicy soup pho with chicken / beef / prawn is brilliant.
(Jan 2015) I had originally given Cafe East a rating of 5 stars in September but my recent experience has left me astounded and feeling the need to have to update my review. I was in a group of 8 people and although we were seated within around 10mins of arriving (which is not bad compared to my past experiences of waiting for a table at Cafe East), upon ordering our food we were forced to wait over 30mins for any starters to arrive, whilst everyone around us (even those who had arrived later) received their food (including what we had ordered). The only explanations our hungry table could fathom is that either our waitress hated our guts or they had lost our order. Mindless of their crimes, when we had asked multiple other waiters where our order was the reply was that they were busy and that our starter is hard to make (despite how we had clearly seen many other tables being served the starter we had ordered. Also during this visit, it seemed as though they were being stingy with the portion of pork in their vietnamese rolls and my pork chop was far too dry. A very many somethings has gone wrong here. (Sep 2014) Authentic Vietnamese food; neither lavish nor basic, Cafe East has all you could hope for with regards to Vietnamese cuisine. The menu is self-explanatory and accompanied by mouth-watering photos. The dishes are certainly bursting with flavours; bringing together fragrances such as lemongrass, vegetables such as parley and other untold spices to make impressive bombshells to your tastebuds within a meal. The portions are generous and even the starters well filled with attention to detail. The only qualm I have about Cafe East is that its name does not do it justice and it only has one option by way of desserts, but then Eastern restaurateurs has never really excelled at these 2 factors anyway. Beware that Cafe East always has a queue so reserve beforehand and visit on an empty stomach so that you can fully capitalise on and enjoy the masterful food presented to you.
Full review with pictures here: http://cheap-eat-london.com/2009/07/25/cafe-east/ Based in Surrey Quays and conveniently located next to the Odeon and Hollywood Bowl complex (the parking is grrrreat!), this place is bigger, badder and a little bit better than it's previous incarnation when they were based in Deptford. They can probably seat around 100 or so people and as a result of the expansion, they have headed into 'Noodle Bar' territory and as a result have lost a little bit of the charm that was the old Cafe East (which seated around 25), but quick and nasty oriental food this most definitely is not! I am absolutely astounded by how consistently good everything is and this is a testament to how well the restaurant is managed. Cafe East is always busy yet spotlessly clean; the service you receive is quick, efficient and friendly; the food looks good and importantly, looks exactly like it does on the menu! Regardless of how the food tastes, Cafe East should be commended on providing something that a hell of a lot of SE / East Asian places fail to do, and that is provide a good service. I'm glad to say that the food doesn't let it down and once those big white plates and of food is hits your table, your eyes will lead, your hands will follow and your tummy will be ever so grateful. The Pho stock could be improved with a bit of added cinnamon and star anise but it may be I'm just a little too picky and particular (so I've been told) but apart from that, the beef pho comes highly recommended as does this mixed one with added chicken and prawns. The chicken curry is sublime and probably my favourite and even if the chicken is cooked off the bone, it's prepared long enough to absorb that lovely coconutty curry, yet still retain a soft moist bite. The banh cuon resembles the Chinese cheung fun which is made from steamed rice paper but the Vietnamese version is lighter, translucent and filled with a season ground pork filling. I love it. My friends love it. My kids love it. You will too. The Bun Ga Nuong which is chicken on a bed of thin rice noodles was deliciously sweet and crispy that I suspect the chicken was deep fried rather than grilled, but when it tastes this addictive, I promised myself I'll run it off later. In their new locale in the strange commercial new build environs of Surrey Quays, Cafe East have made themselves even more accessible and on that basis, if you've been hankering to taste what the fuss is about, then you really don't have an excuse. £4-5 for a starter, £6-7.50 for a main. They also have a great selection of soft drinks such as coconut juice, sweetened soya and traditional bean dessert drinks but they don't serve alcohol. Also be aware they only take cash.
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The verdict: it's good but I'm still looking for great. My Vietnamese friends brought me here because I bemoaned about the lack of good Vietnamese restaurants in London and upon entering Café East, I thought this could be 'the one'. With a canteen like interior and a colourful image filled laminated menu cards, I was impressed with the many synergies with local establishments in Sydney's Cabramatta. The pho disappointingly, was slightly bland and not piping hot as it should be, it was extremely busy so I do forgive them and will return for hopefully, a more authentic experience. read more
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Cafe East used to be my go-to place whenever I had a craving for Vietnamese food however I doubt I will be returning again. Here are the reasons: 1. All the food we ordered tasted rancid and we eventually found out that it was because of the fried shallots which was present in all the dishes. We pointed it out to the waiter and he admitted that the fried shallots were old. He did not even apologise or offer to replace the dishes 2. This year, they have raised the prices of all dishes by around 15%. The waiter said that it was due to an increase in their rent 3. No tap water served in the restaurant. I have never experienced this in any London restaurant 4. The food has become much spicier, almost unbearably spicy i would say. We suspect that this is the case so that customers would drink more. As no tap water is served, customers would have to buy more drinks 5. Service is horrible, but this has always been the case anyway Restaurants that don't have their customers' interest at heart like Cafe East will never be able to retain them. Good luck with keeping your business open, Cafe East read more
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More info about Cafe East
100 Redriff Road
London SE16 7LH
United Kingdom
Surrey Quays, Rotherhithe, Canada Water, Bermondsey
Directions
020 7252 1212
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http://cafeeastpho.co.uk/
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Review Highlights - Cafe East
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