Song Que

I was looking forward to this, my second restaurant on Kingsland Road, after the favourable experience I had with Tay Do.

Food

I decided to test out the thing that separates the good and the bad of Vietnamese cuisine, so ordered the pho with rare beef, tripe and tendon (£5.50), and was severely disappointed. The soup was so one dimensional, and the bits of beef tasteless and the texture was just wrong. It only improved with loads of chillies, which I don’t usually add to my pho. Oh how I long for some good pho. Slokky’s hot and spicy seafood noodle soup(£6.20), was actually even worst! Not particularly spicy or hot, where the “seafood” consisted of a couple of pieces of watery prawns.

Rating - 4.5

Atmosphere

On this particular Monday night, the place was packed. In terms of décor, it is worn down and dated. Even though it was close to Christmas, the decoration looks like they had been there for years and never taken off. Tables are packed together and haphazardly arranged. Normal I don’t mind this mind of joint, as it usually means that the food brings the people here, but in this case, I’m not sure what draws the crowd? Familiarity? Location? Or did I just order wrong?

Rating - 0.5

Service

Terrible. For a Vietnamese restaurant that should survive on turnover, it took a long time to deliver the pho. You only expect them to have to spoon the soup over the noodles, but it was about a 20 mins wait, which is definitely unacceptable. The waiters were quite rude and it took us a long time to get the bill.

Rating - 1

C-factor

All things considered, not so cheap afterall, especially since it has so much competition so close by!

Rating - 0

Brownie Points - 6

Info

134 Kingsland Road
London
E2 8DY
Phone +44 (0)20 7613 3222