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| - Stick to the grilled foods and keep it simple when you die at Saigon Grille.
Saigon Grille was an average experience for me. The service was ok, not bad but not great. The food was ok, but not great. Actually, "ok, but not great" was really the theme of the expeirence.
We had the Banh Xeo (Vietnamese Crepe), Canh Ga Chien B (Butter Fried Chicken Wings 4pc.), Crispy Pork Skin Rolls (it was a rice paper roll), Pho Tai Sach (Pho with eye round steak and tripe), and Bun Thit Nuong cha gio (Vermicelli rice noodles with marinated grilled pork and chopped egg rolls).
The thit nuong cha gio was good. The grill flavor made the dish pop. It's fairly simple dish and we did spice it up a lot with the red pepper paste, but I was quite happy with this one and I would eat it again. The flavors were clean and simple and I wanted to keep stealing bites from my wife. Even so, compared to the food I've had at other Vietnamese restaurants in Cleveland, this was average at best.
The pho was actually pretty good, but they didn't hit it out of the park. The broth was full of flavor and quite lively. The beef didn't do me wrong and the tripe was actually quite tender given it's tripe. There was plenty of meat in the bowl, but I would have liked a bit more tripe. I would say their pho is better than most places in Cleveland, but I wouldn't deem it to be a great success. #1 Pho is still my favorite, but I would eat Saigon Grille's pho again.
The other items (the appetizers) were nothing special, and in some cases complete failures. The wings were super crispy, which I really liked, but I would have loved to get something more than sweet chili sauce to dip them in. These were plain wings, after all. I would probably skip these next time.
The crispy pork skin rolls lost their crisp--it tasted like they made the wraps earlier in the day. The refrigeration and moisture from the noodles got rid of the most important texture of the food--the crisp. The crispy pork skin rolls were also quite flavorless. I could have done without the rolls.
The banh xeo was an oily mess. It was not a traditional banh xeo/Vietnamese crepe. I would say this was more like a thick Chinese pancake wrapped around canned shrimp and some cooked beef, then doused in oil. The oil was so heavy that all I could really taste was the oil--the flavors of the ingredients or any seasoning they might have used were completely lost. I think I could taste the green onion, but that was it. Since the item was super thick and messy, it just didn't work. I wish I hadn't ordered it.
Our server was attentive to start, but she was confused on our orders even when we ordered by the menu numbers. My wife asked to have her dish made spicy and the sever just told us to add some of the sriracha and red pepper paste on the table to our food. I'm sure they have something in the kitchen to make the food spicy for us, but that's not a huge deal and we made it work. I was kind of irked when I had to go to the server to give her our payment--she didn't come back after she paid the bill even though this wasn't one of those joints where you pay at the register near the exit.
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