The Asian restaurant selection and quality was unspectacular when I first came here to Budapest 14 years ago. There were only one or two places people used to frequent, while the others left you looking at your plate in disappointment and longing for the local Asian restaurant back home.

Thankfully, this has since changed and you now have a lot of good establishments dotted all over the city, including quite a few Vietnamese.

This one recently opened just around the corner from me on Andrássy ut, and I jumped at the chance to go and check it out. Vin Vin City is the sister restaurant of one catering for office workers in the 13^th district, which has generally positive reviews, so I was eager to see what this one has to offer.

The décor is tastefully done, modern with the main eating area situated in a nice airy high ceilinged room, with additional seating upstairs on a mezzanine, and also outside on the street.

We opted for a place just inside the main entrance where we could feel the summer breeze, but not be put off by the traffic outside.

The staff were friendly, however a bit on the slow side. For a starter I ordered a couple of spring rolls (290 HUF/piece), which were delicious. One of the best I’ve had here, nice and crisp.

For the main course we had pho soup with boiled beef (1490 HUF) and the crunchy chicken (1290 HUF). The Pho was good, but not as good as the Funky Pho restaurant down the road. It tasted slightly watered down compared to that one. The crunchy chicken was good and well worth it.

I never miss a dessert if I can help it, and so ordered the fried banana with chocolate (690 HUF) and the rice pudding in coconut (also 690 HUF). The banana was amazing, lightly fried and full of heavenly sweetness. It actually made me go “hmmmmm” out loud, and I could have ordered more.

The rice desert was more of an “hmmmmm?” It was one of those dishes where you’ve ordered something and then you think they’ve brought you something else by mistake. It just turns out it was different to what I'd imagined. The rice pudding came in a dark coconut liquid. A bit more rice and less sauce wouldn’t have gone a miss. Made me regret the fact I hadn’t ordered another fab bananas dishes. Nevermind, as I’m sure I’ll be back for more in future.

Overall I recommend this one as a good value-for-money option if you’re downtown and fancy a taste of Vietnam.

Vin.Vin City
1062 Budapest,
Andrássy út 79.
www.vin-vin.hu

About the Author: Richard Jones
I write reviews for fun as a hobby, and was not paid or given free food for this review. Prices are correct as of time of writing: May 2018. There are probably grammatical errors in the above, I just got a C for English at school, so what do you expect, still I did my best! This review does not reflect the opinion of XpatLoop, please just treat it as friendly expat advice.

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