| rev:text
| - I reluctantly give Ha Long Bay 3 stars.
I say reluctantly because I want to give them more, but I can't in good conscience. The food is (usually) amazing. We order from them frequently, but despite them having the best Thai and Vietnamese food in town (in addition to Lao), we often opt to order elsewhere to avoid various hassles.
One is that there is usually no parking. Not completely their fault. More importantly, we usually order and are told it will be anywhere from 20-45 minutes. Regardless of how long we are told it will take, when we go to pick up at the specified time or even a little bit afterwards, we wait at the restaurant for a minimum of 15 minutes for our food. Usually my husband suffers this indecency when we order, because he loves their Pho and I am obsessed with their Tom Kha Noodle Soup (never seen anything quite like it anywhere else). Recently, however, I ordered take out with a friend and we went to pick it up together. I predicted to my friend that 1) our food would not be ready when we got there (which was 20 minutes after we were told it would be ready), and 2) that we would need to check the food because they would likely forget something. (More than once after picking up aforementioned pho, my husband got home to find to his dismay that his fixins (sprouts, basil, peppers etc) were missing). Also, the previous time I ordered, I had ventured to try something new, Xao Lac, a peanut dish with hot peppers, but instead got something with cashews that was totally bland and had nary a hot pepper to be seen.
Unfortunately, I ended up being right on both counts. We got our food shortly after arriving, they read our order to us, we confirmed that it was right, paid and took it to our car. I had my friend check the bag. Our simple order of my soup, her curry and our dumplings was missing dumplings. Back in we went. I told the hostess and she went to investigate. I heard someone in the kitchen chastise her that "they were missing because the order wasn't ready yet." (Ding ding ding! Now I'm 2/2!) If you can't tell from that overheard exchange, it seems like there is a level of disorganization and poor communication that makes good service fairly unlikely. As a side note, although it was busy, there had to have been at least 10-12 people working besides chefs (3-4 people just in front manning the cash register), so it wasn't an issue of operating with a skeleton crew.
I have also eaten in at Ha Long Bay 2-3 times and the service hasn't been any better. I'm from the east coast and it's been suggested to me the standard here isn't the same. Well, I don't really buy that given how many places I've gone in Madison that have EXCELLENT service. Also, while a mistake once in a while can happen anywhere, the fact that it is the rule rather than the exception at Ha Long Bay frustrates me. Because I really want to love this place.
Anyway, I can recommend the fresh spring rolls, curry puffs, crab rangoon, fried dumplings (best I've had in a while), soups mentioned earlier, in addition to Pad Phet and Xao Ca Ri. Really, everything is probably delicious. If you get it. And if it's what you ordered.
Do better, HLB. I implore you.
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