Ca Dao Vietnamese Restaurant

I went here last night w/​other Unilocalers and ordered the grilled beef short ribs with rice. I was lucky enough to get my order with in the hour. Comparing to the other grilled and barbecue dishes, the food looked the same and they might have used the same marinade. But it was still delicious. I agree with the other reviews that the place was a little chilly.

I don’t know why I bother to review this place. It’s going to go out of business soon. We stayed at the place for 2.5 hours, and no other customers came. I think our group of 20 helped pay rent for the month. Next month, they are out of there.
The service sucked. But they’re not used to having 20 people show up at once. We didn’t get our waters, they forgot who ordered what, they took hours for some of the food to come out, they didn’t refill anything, and so on.
The food tasted decent. I got the burnt rice with pork. That plate looks deceptively small, but I found it filling. It had a large amount of burnt rice, with eggs inside but a small amount of pork. I wished it had more pork than rice.
The phở tasted good. I think it’s one of the better phở I tasted. They gave generous amount of tendon and the broth had a nice, beefy taste.
The spring rolls were okay. It could be because they were hastily making it.
I would recommend people to come to Ca Dao. Although, you would be the only person eating there. But I think the food is decent enough to make the trip. I think they should go full Antico/​Heirloom style and get a tiny, cheap space with 1 – 2 tables.
I give 4 stars for food and 2 stars for service.

Hmm… How do I rate this place after last night’s UYE (
)? I showed up several minutes beforehand to make sure the restaurant was ready to handle us, since over 20 people clicked they were in. The owner and employee quickly arranged several tables together to form one long table that seated 20. This turned out to be perfect since exactly 20 people showed up.
Everything in my original review still holds true. A very popular dish ordered last night was #71, the burnt rice with pork dish. I saw several plates of spring rolls, hot bowls of phở, and cups of bubble tea as well. Everyone seemed to like the food and bubble teas, so that was a win.
The service was quite disappointing, however. I came in person and spoke with the owner about one month prior to make sure he knew a big group was coming. I also called the restaurant on Tuesday and Wednesday (no answer either time) and left voice mails to make sure they knew we were still coming. No response.
The food was brought out as fast as they could cook it. Some people got their dishes in no time. Others had to wait forever. The longest wait was for my rice dish, which took 2 hours and 15 minutes. TWO HOURS AND FIFTEEN MINUTES! I’ve never waited for food that long before. By the time my dish arrived, half the people were already paying and getting ready to go. It wasn’t just the rice dishes, but phở too. I actually wasn’t too upset because I was having a good time talking to everyone, but I did feel bad for some of the other Unilocalers like Cynthia N. and Julie C. who were experiencing Vietnamese food for the first time.
I think there were only three people working in the restaurant: the owner, owner’s wife, and server. At one point, the owner tried to discreetly leave the restaurant and returned carrying a small black bag — probably of ingredients they’d run out of back in the kitchen. When he left, we were joking that he went down the street to Phở Dai Loi to get extra bowls of phở for us.
Ca Dao isn’t really equipped to handle a large group such as ours, but I still think they are okay if you are coming with a smaller group. They just aren’t used to having many customers. Case in point, we were the only customers in the restaurant the entire night.
Thanks to everyone who came and to Kathleen for handing out « Unilocal LIFE» gloves to everyone. In summary for last night, food = good, service = bad. My original review for this restaurant is more representative of a typical night, so you should refer to that instead.

So I’ve only been to Ca Dao once but picked it based on the positive Unilocal reviews. Overall, it was pretty great. Like mose places on Buford Highway, it didn’t have that much in the way of ambience but that is to be expected.
The owner was quite nice and the food was delivered in a timely fashion. We started with the tofu spring rolls which were enormous! Pretty tasty although a little unwieldy to eat. For entrees, I had the chicken com in a clay pot. It was quite good. My dining mate had the #71 (mentioned in other reviews) which is a burnt rice and pork dish. He raved about how good it was. I don’t eat pork, but the burnt rice cake was quite good.
In all, I would definitely recommend trying this place out. Nice meal for a reasonable price.

y do I always come here when it’s wet and cold out? I like this place man. The food and service has been consistently good (business seems consistently slow too, sad face). This place has a good selection of unique Vietnamese food as well, one of which took me by surprise.
I was surprised to see the burnt rice dish on the menu. Mama used to give us burnt rice from the bottom of rice pot w/​sugar as an after dinner snack. That’s my only knowledge of burnt rice… sooo, I don’t know what region this dish originated from or wha…
The burnt rice had a good consistent crunch, but it was not really burnt like burnt rice at bottom of pot. It’s rice dipped in some egg, flattened and fried to crunchy. It’s interesting, tasted like rice cracker. It’s something good to try if you’re feeling creative. I’d venture to say this place is the only place that offer this dish. Other places maybe offer rice in clay pot, but I don’t think they have a dish cooked like this. Someone prove me wrong.
Support this business yal before they no longer exist!