Saigon Noodle and Grill

Viet Town/​Mills50/​Colonialtown/​Lake Eola Heights… whatever hood or burrough you call this area, but for Orlandoans there is no lack of Vietnamese cuisine in them. I’ve been pretty loyal to my one spot… but this is quickly being added to the rotation.
What sets this apart from the others is the genuine hospitality of the owner. He takes pride in his food and wants you to experience it that way he would like you to. I thought i was a pretty good connoisseur of Viet food, but he introduced me to the proper way of eating the Vietnamese pancake (banh xeo). It is a delicious appetizer that can easily substitute as your meal. Crispy shell with savory/​sweet meats and veggies inside, served with the herbs, pickled carrots, and the nuoc mam sauce! All those flavors and textures that you roll up in a lettuce wrap! Sooo goood! I’ve had this at other places before, but i guess I was eating it wrong. And i never had one that tasted as good! I’ve also had their Wonton Egg Noodle, phở, and pan-​fried noodles that folks have raved about, also delicious.
The decorations are simple and somewhat quirky. They even have a stage with disco lights and what not. I wonder if they do karaōke! I haven’t had their Viet coffee yet, either, but i’ll definitely be making more trips to this great Viet restaurant and find out!

My favorite place to get some phở!!!
It’s the best! This is the only restaurant I get phở from because the taste is consistent.
The phở broth is so flavorful and delicious, I can’t get enough.
They have a big menu with lots of options.
Portions are generous and prices are fair.
The owner is fantastic and funny. Always cheerful.
I love this place! :)

First time coming here with my family since we wanted to try out a new Vietnamese place. Parking isn’t the greatest but the restaurant is very spacious. Lots to choose from on the menu. The staff was very welcoming and the owner was very hands on with interacting with us. The restaurant is very decorative and clean. Food was amazing! My family and I had a great time and will definitely be back!

So good! Amazing broth and my kid talked a lot about how much he loved the fried rice. A great kid pleaser.

Fantastic food! The Saigon roll and chicken wings were delicious and fresh. Also tried the pad thai combo and wonton soup bowl. Highly recommend. Staff was friendly and attentive.

A perfectly serviceable Vietnamese restaurant. When I went for dinner, there was only 1 other table seated, which was kind of sad. Hopefully the foot traffic picks up over time. My go-​to dish during my first visit to any Viet restaurant is phở, and the dish here did not disappoint. It was a good value, and filled with lots of fresh ingredients. A definite winner.

I chose Saigon Noodle and grill over a nearby chain noodle place for lunch, and I was rewarded with a great experience! The food was excellent and our waiter, who I suspect is the proprietor, was both friendly and helpful when it came to choosing dishes from a somewhat unfamiliar menu. The décor is a hoot, and there was a full drum kit and band setup in an area of the restaurant clearly not utilized during lunch service. Oh, the possibilities…

Headed in here after having it bookmarked for quite some time. The place was empty when we went but it was early dinner time, so nothing too odd about that. There were several groups that came in shortly before we were done, and a bunch of to go orders picked up.
The inside is clean and well kept. Tables were set and ready to go. Décor is eclectic and varied. Menu has everything from thai to Vietnamese to Chinese dishes.
Staff was great at taking care of us. The food was very good. The fried rice was made to order. The phở was a large portion.
Overall: A
A repeat place with great service. Get some phở.

This is place is far out really good my second time and even better I love this place I would go again and would recommend

Fantastic service and cuisine, with a menu that is very reasonably priced and diverse, offering very unique dishes not found in most Vietnamese restaurants around town.

A great bowl of phở can be found at Saigon Noodle and Grill! I am a big fan of phở and like to frequent all of the different locations in the area to continue my search for the best bowl. I’m not willing to give this title away now, but Saigon’s bowl has flavors that differentiate it from the competition and I think that’s a good thing.
We ordered the summer rolls which are my favorite. They seemed very fresh and has great peanut sauce to accompany. You can also order 2 or 4 rolls which I thought was a nice touch.
We ordered Phở Ga and the veggie phở with veggie broth. I appreciate that they clearly identify the vegetarian options. They also have two different sizes for phở, but the regular was perfectly large enough for us.
The chicken seemed high quality and the veggie bowl was STUFFED with a ton of different vegetables and large chunks of grilled tofu. The flavor of the broth is very different from the other phở shops. I think it may have hints of anise in the broth. It is smokey and sweet and very different than others I have had. I’m sure it may not appeal to all, but I liked the different flavor Saigon offered.
Service was fast, friendly, and polite. The environment is clean and relatively spacious. I was especially into the karaōke stage with crazy lights. I did see a sneak preview of a UYE on the karaōke stage and it looks like a real good time. Ample parking is another great perk for this location and it’s worth taking a small drive over to Bumby to try out the Milk District’s best bowl of noodles.

The food is so good beat pha Thai I had in a while! I love their fast service and how great everything looks. I’m glad I have a place like this so close to my job that I could enjoy when ever I want. and is so clean that is a major plus

From the first slam of the microwave oven to asking them to tune in the radio so we could hear more than static we know it was under new ownership. If you bring anyone with the possibility of having a seizure make sure they are facing away from the stage. Each time we asked, once with radio tuning and second for the light show his answer was the same «I do not know, the owner is not here».
The FOOD. Yes I give the food 3 stars. Eatable. The sliced beef was lunch meat and the tomato had sat in water so long that I thought I was eating a sponge.
I will be waiting to see what moves in next.

I read an article written years ago about the best soups in Orlando. They happened to mention Saigon Noodle. So, I visited their establishment on Goldenrod, and surely they were right. Their soups are incredible. I’m thrilled they opened a restaurant on Bumby.
My favorite item is the Wonton Egg Noodle Soup. However, lately I have not been completely pleased. It seems like the flavor changes every time. On my last visit, they added shrimp to it without asking me. The shrimps gave it a really fishy taste. Nevertheless, I do enjoy everything else I have tried on the menu. They are one of the best Vietnamese. Additionally, customer service is always excellent.

I’ve had two experiences with Saigon Noodle and Grill, and I was blown away by the customer service both times. The first time I went it was only for take out, to satisfy my phở craving. When they said that my order would be completed in 5 minutes I was skeptical, but when I showed up it was all ready for me, with each component of the phở separately packaged, which I really appreciated!
The second time I went to Saigon Noodle and Grill it was with a big group for a UYE. I was amazed by how well we were taken care of, and how the quality of SN&G’s service didn’t diminish at all with the size of our group. While we were there we took advantage of the karaōke stage, and the owner did a great job of explaining how to work it, and we had an amazing time belting out some old classics! This time I got the pad thai, which came out in a huge portion. It could have used a bit more flavor (which I remedied with a side of peanut sauce), but otherwise was delicious.
I do wish they had more alcoholic drink options. They only have beer, and as someone who doesn’t drink much beer, I would have loved a cider, sake, or wine option.

We love Saigon’s original location on Goldenrod, and this one being newer and closer to where we stayed at this time, we decided to visit here instead. This place is huge, a stand alone building with its own parking lot. It looks like part of the restaurant can be used for banquets, with props and karaōke machine.
Well, it’s a different chef, and somehow the food isn’t quite as good as the original. The spring roll came out way too fast and was barely warm; it probably had been sitting out. Some of the beef in our soup was also chewy and dry.
As for the service, it certainly wasn’t rude, just plain weird… I appreciate the waiter trying to be friendly and helpful, but maybe tune it down a bit. As we were sitting down, the waiter mumbled, «we have Vietnamese beer.» He put down the menu, «Saigon beer, from Vietnam.» Then he turned away and mumbled «two Saigon beer.» It took a moment for my brain to process what he was saying and yelled after him, «no I don’t want beer!!» Okay, I am not disputing that I am a beer lover, but I am not sure what body signal I gave for ordering a beer. (I suppose fellow Unilocaler Derock H. got the same server we did, just that he «ordered» the chicken soup without saying a word.)
Then, while we were eating, the waiter returned and said, no, you have to put the basil in. We said, yes, we did. And he insisted that we need to put in more. And he stood there and waited for us to put more basil in. No, you need more. And kept watching till we threw in a few more leaves into our bowls.

Came here as a party of 4 for a pre-​theater dinner stop — it was an early dinner as the show at the Orlando Shakes started at 7:30pm. I used the Unilocal app to send an email to make the booking and the owner responded very promptly, confirming our reservation.
Lots of parking available in front of the restaurant, which was great. I got Thai iced tea to drink and it was just perfectly lovely — right amount of sweet (I have been to some places where the sweetness is overpowering, but here it really allowed the earthy, woodsy nature of the tea leaves to shine thru).
So I realize that probably my review of this place is thru a very European lens, however I _​have_​just come from three years of EU living, and so at least my bias is up front and hopefully helps explain why my review’s star rating is so different and almost an anomaly from other Unilocal reviewers’ ratings.
I think what struck me first off when our food plate arrived was how massive the plate was! Being used to EU portion controlled plates of food, it was a little overpowering to get so much food, albeit really beautifully presented.
Based on previous Unilocal reviews, I knew I wanted to try the pan-​fried rice noodles, but for me, a couple of things were off with the dish. Firstly, I found the soy sauce used was too dark and super salty in taste (or maybe the chef just used too much of it for my palate!!). I think coming from Brussels, where the French influence on Vietnamese cuisine is especially pronounced, means I am used to Asian sauces that taste very light but with tons of complex depth of flavors. But the soy sauce used for this dish was disappointing because the salt was all I tasted and I ended up dipping the noddles into it very sparingly. Oh also, I am not sure if it was soy sauce or oyster sauce or a mix that I tasted? And this lack of identification is sorta disappointing too!
Secondly, I really really wish my veg mix had mushrooms! Some button or shiitake or portobello mushroom varieties might have helped pull down the soy/​oyster sauce levels and because the mushroom juices might have mixed in with the soy, it would have perhaps helped add more flavor depth to the sauce.
I also found that the mix of proteins wasn’t very balanced — I asked for everything except beef (which I tend to avoid due to being born in the Hindu faith) but if there was any pork on my plate, it was of the invisible kind — instead I seemed to have a triple helping of chicken, a fair amount of shrimp and a decent amount of calamari.
Then a couple of bites into the dish, my brother and another diner realized that the server had given them the wrong dishes! Both of them had ordered the Crispy Noodle dish, but my brother had asked for all proteins except beef, and the other diner had asked only for chicken. So as my brother was eating thru his dish, he was like, I only seem to have chicken and then when he looked over, the other diner had shrimp and calamari on their plate! C’mon — there were only 3 other tables that were busy at that time! Frankly am also disappointed that the server couldn’t recall which diner had ordered which dish :-(
However, I do realize that we seemed to have unwittingly ordered more Chinese taste-​profile dishes rather than Vietnamese, so I do want to go back and try some dishes that are more towards the latter persuasion (after all, this is a Vietnamese place!!).

First I wanna say SUPER CLEAN. That’s always a great sign right? Large amount of space, cute cozy booths. Came here around 4:00 it’s pretty dead but that’s always great to me. Super great phở! Such flavorful broth. BEEY fresh a crisp summer garden rolls, and LOVED the papaya salad with shrimp and squid got whole fried tilapia. Took a while. But it’s amazing!
Con is only that you have to ASK for fish sauce. If I’m at a Vietnamese place there should be plenty of fish sauce on the table. Just saying.

5 stars for a killer Thai coffee and a new favorite Vietnamese dish (pan fried noodles for those of you who need a tl;dr version).
We called ahead for a larger group on New Year’s Eve and were seated as soon as we arrived. The owner took out orders and it was such a treat! He made a ton of recommendations, including what he said was the best Thai coffee in town, and we gladly accepted. He also mentioned that his wife works at the Goldenrod location while he’s at this one– gotta love a good family biz!
On to the food. Drop everything and order the pan fried noodles. Veggies smothered in a brown sauce with pie-​shaped wedges of noodles and egg, pan fried and crispy on the edges. It’s a big dish, so I shared it.
We also ordered that famous Thai coffee and I must admit, it was pretttttty epic. We all agreed that it felt like a sinful dessert. I mostly appreciated that it retained a great bitterness that kept it from being overly sweet. I see my caffeine intake increasing exponentially after trying this one!
We also ordered shrimp and pork summer rolls, which were good. The owner strongly suggested we add a spicy red pepper sauce to the peanut sauce and it did the trick and made these summer rolls stand out.
Overall, it was a unique Vietnamese dinner in an area which is overflowing with Vietnamese restaurants. That’s quite a big feat!

We are big fans of the Saigon Noodle & Grill on Goldenrod. I wish we could say that we were coming here specifically to check out their second location, but we actually were going to Phở K5 when we realized that it was closed. Lucky for us though, it was opening day for Saigon Noodle & Grill, so we wouldn’t have to leave hungry.
The service is great here, everyone seems friendly. The items we tried were definitely reminiscent of the Goldenrod location counterparts, which is good news for me because it’s really good food. I had the Pan Fried Rice Noodle Combo, which is a large plate of pan fried rice and egg sliced up with beef, chicken, squid, shrimp, bok choy, onion, carrot, and some other stuff, all sitting on a layer of brown sauce. It’s freaking delicious, and I highly recommend it. The summer rolls are also quite good, so don’t forget to get some of those too.
Opening a Vietnamese restaurant downtown takes a fair bit of courage considering the competition, but I think Saigon Noodle & Grill has what it takes.