High Lua Vietnamese Kitchen

Summary

As usual, the North Williamsburg area is a pretty hot spot for restaurants to eat at. I had lived in this area for about 2 years, but I still come back time to time to get a haircut. Usually after the haircut, I’ll check out something. I’ve been looking for a decent pho place that is close enough to me such that I don’t have to travel to Flushing.

This was coconut juice and lychee green tea. The lychee green tea was pretty good. I thought it wasn’t too sweet, and it had a strong taste of lychee.

The sausage roll was rice paper rolls wrapped with sliced sausages, fried egg, carrot, and cu san. It’s served with peanut hoison sauce with toasted peanuts. This was like the normal spring rolls you’d get at a Vietnamese restaurant but without the shrimp. Despite that, it still tasted pretty good. The rice paper was pretty clean and fresh as the edges weren’t dry. The hoisin with peanuts wasn’t too sweet and was a nice dipping sauce.

The chicken noodle came with chicken broth, tumeric noodles, and topped with poached chicken thigh. It’s served with cilantro, sesame cracker, bean sprouts, lettuce, lime, mint, and jalapeño on the side. The tumeric noodles were bursting with flavor. The noodles themselves remind me of fettucine. The broth wasn’t very plentiful, but it was flavorful. The broth had a lot of saltiness to it, and so it was understandable that there wasn’t a lot of broth. It reminded me of a dry/wet noodle combination.

The beef pho had 7 spices and was served with sirloin steak and brisket topped with onions and scallions. It came served with bean sprouts, basil, lime, and jalapeño on the side. Surprisingly, the broth here is actually pretty good. It’s not as good as say Phorage back in Los Angeles, but it reminded me heavily of it. In addition, the meat was actually pretty good quality. They give you hoison and siracha sauces on the side to dip your meat. All in all, I thought the pho here was actually really decent compared to some other Vietnamese restaurants in New York City.

The service was very fast and attentive. If you pay by cash, you get 5% off your total bill.

Final Verdict

For the area, this Vietnamese restaurant has a lot of good things going for it. For the few dishes we ordered, they were all tasty. If you’re around the North Williamsburg area, this might be a good place to catch up for Vietnamese.

Yelp Jabs

Second course I ordered was inedible. “Vietnamese ham” tastes more like vietnamese spam. Beef shank was fatty and boiled. Do not order special written on the blackboard is my advice.

Yeah the ham they use in banh mi also resembles spam. Fortunately for us, there was nothing written on the black board when we were there.

We got 2 bowls of pho and a chicken rice dish and the bill was $80 with tip.. that’s a bit pricey for Vietnamese food

Each bowl of pho is ~$16. The rice dishes are close to $18. So that’s already at $50. Add on drinks, and $80 tip is pretty easy to get to. This person is from Philly though, so they must not be used to NYC prices.