Vikas Sharma

My partner has been on the hunt for good Vietnamese joints since we first arrived, as our initial experience wasn’t great.

Understand, there’s so much good Vietnamese in Toronto.

Last week we visited Chi (review here) – and it was a homerun.

This weekend Anh and Chi was on the docket.

First things first – I’m not sure I understand their stance on dissuading reservations and promoting walk-ins. If you book online, you have to make a $10 per/person contribution to a charity of their choice. I appreciate their charitable stance, but I think it’s incumbent upon them to make that decision on their own dime, not their potential customers before they’ve even walked in the door.

The hype around this place was evident by the sheer number of walk-ins who were willing to wait 90 minutes to two hours to get in (it was a Saturday evening at 8 p.m. when we arrived for our reservation). My expectations had grown significantly by seeing the zoo of people outside vying for a patio or bar seat.

So, if their tactic is to make it look as if they are best restaurant in Vancouver by keeping the sidewalks busy outside, they’ve accomplished that. But promoting reservations might be a tad more conducive to a good experience (especially to an old-timer like me). Maybe the young kids like to wait … I don’t know.

My partner has been amazing at securing reservations and nice seating spots for our outings, so I was glad not to be in the sea of would-be diners.

The décor is gorgeous and their branding is on point. Even their doggy bags look great with their logo sticker on them.

The service was also exceptional – true to our Vancouver experience, in the past six months. We had to wait about five or so minutes for our table, and we were greeted with two complimentary flutes of bubbly for the wait; a very nice gesture and a great way to start off the experience at Anh and Chi.

Our server Brenna was awesome – attentive and on top of any cues for requests. She did a great job and appeared to be calmly enjoying her shift despite how crazy-busy the place was. Based on how quickly the dishes arrived, and without issue, I can only guess that the place is run like a well-oiled machine in the back-of-house.

Get ’em in, get ’em out, but with grace and in a lovely environment.

On to the food – but before I do, I need to strongly state that I’m holding onto my experience from Chi just the week prior – and the food at Chi was flawless.

To start, we tried the vegetarian salad rolls (Cay Me), the crispy veggie spring rolls (Cha Gio Chay), and the crispy prawn cakes (Banh Khot).

The three items were good, but not great. There was a flavour zing missing that I experienced at Chi. It could have been the sauces – also, as an example, the spring rolls were pretty heavy and lacked the crispy-lightness of those I experienced the week before. The crispy prawn cake was also just okay – as there wasn’t a particular outstanding flavour that I could pick up on.

For me, the star of the evening was the Market Vegetable, which was yu choy with XO sauce. It was just right – not too fancy, simple, and tasty. The serving was also sizable, which allowed for leftovers for a meal at home the next day.

For the mains, I had the Bun Chay (veggie bowl) and my partner the steamed rice sheets (Banh Cuon). Again, there was something missing in the Bun Chay – it was just plain, but good. My partner said that she enjoyed the Banh Cuon, however, the nest of sweet potato, under which her prawns were served, was greasy and a bit heavy.

All in all – this is a tough one, because I like the joint, it looks great, the staff were awesome (from the host to the server), and the story of the owning family is a common story amongst friends and co-workers that I know. I really wanted this to be a homerun, but it was really a third base effort at best, because the food should take you all the way.

I should note that the photos on their website are bang-on as it pertains to their food – I’ve included a couple below.

Return: Maybe – perhaps I would try some different menu items – as there were some other items that we thought were worth tasting.

Rating: 6.5/10

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