Viet Royale Visited 11/27/10 3.75 Forks

Viet Royale 6767 Wilson Blvd, Falls Church, VA 22044

In the same vein for trying new restaurants when I am home, I had wanted to go to Eden Center for a while.  It's a very well known Vietnamese shopping complex in Virginia and as a lover of all Vietnamese food (not just pho), I had really wanted to try this place out.  The problem was that there are so many places that I didn't know which specific restaurant to try.  By the time we got to Eden, it was 2pm and I as so hungry that I could have cared less where we went.

Viet Royale was one of the first places we saw and it had a bunch of Washingtonian awards in its window, so how bad could it be? It was in fact very good.  There's not much decor to speak of but I never really expect that in Asian restaurants.  Of course, instead of picking dishes, my mom just asks the waitress what she recommends.  So we ended up getting fried spring rolls, a seafood pancake/crepe, bun with pork wrapped around a sugarcane, and a fish dish with a camarlized sauce in a claypot (sorry that I can't remember the actual names or number of the dishes).  The waitress was extremely friendly and I thought that the overall service was really good.  The food came out quickly and the waitress was attentive and asked us if we liked her selections. 

The fried spring rolls were quite food and flavorful with pork inside.  It was fried just long enough to be crispy on the outside but the skin wasn't so thick that you felt like you were just eating fried dough.  I loved the side of fish sauce and pickled veggies they give you.  It really brings out the flavor of the rolls.  Next came the seafood/bean sprout pancake.  It's basically a giant crepe filled with some shrimp/pork and beansrpouts.  While this was good, it was a bit disappointing to not have more seafood in it and the thiness of the crepe made it a bit difficult to eat.  It did have a slight coconut flavor to it which was a nice twist.  Then the bun with pork sugarcane came out.  Bun is basically vermicelli noodles with some greens/sliced cucumber and then usually a meat.  I had never really had bun before but had heard that it's a popular Vietnamese dish.  While the pork was good, I wasn't too sure what to do with the noodles.  They didn't really have any taste to it.  Maybe I should have wrapped it in the lettuce, but that was a bit unclear. The fish was dish was my favorite.  The pieces of fish were tender and tasty (no bones) and the sauce was sweet but not overpowering.  It went really well with the rice and filled me up perfectly.  The meal ended with complementary "dessert" which was a tapioca,corn,pea cold soup.  It was nice of them to give it to us and it was fine, but as I have said many times before, Asians just don't do desserts very well.  The only reason I'm not giving it 4 Forks is because the bill ended up being a bit more than I would usually like for this type of food.  It was $55 with tip and tax for 3, which in theory isn't a lot, but when you're used to paying $6/dish usually, this seemed a bit much.  But with the American Express Small Business Saturday promo, I ended up getting $25 back on my statement!