A Dong

This is a small Vietnamese & Chinese restaurant in the Forum shopping center. To be concise, the food was pretty good but the service was absolutely atrocious. My wife & I sat with empty drink glasses while three staff (all family I believe) sat on their asses texting or otherwise screwing off on their smartphones. It is literally the first time I have ever not tipped a single penny. Paying the check was a quagmire also. Lesson learned.

The servers were friendly but weren’t attentive, granted we did sit outside. I’m surprised by the positive reviews as this was the worse Vietnamese food I’ve ever had. My search for good phở continues…

Food is Great! Service is lacking :/
Veggie Phở is great *I just ask that only fresh veggies and no canned veggies (baby carrot, mushroom and water chestnut) are used.
I was going to 4 Star which is closer but A Dong is way more consistent.
Hubby likes the sesame chicken. They use real meat and not so much breading.

I really enjoyed my very first meal here today. Foods were excellent. Services were helpful and place was clean. Love to be back!

I have been twice now. The first time was pretty good. The second time not so much. My advice would be to order the most true Vietnamese dish on the menu. For instance, the first time I go Phở, which was really good. The second time I got shrimp and cashew. The mushrooms were canned – yuck. The customer service was OK – nothing to write home about. Nonetheless, I will endorse the Phở.

Bad customer service and the food is not consistent! it’s a hit or miss. sometimes the food would be OK and sometimes the food is not good at all. so I stopped coming.

If you are not Viet, they will seat you last. Doesn’t matter if you are first in line, the owner will seat Viets before anyone. I will find another place to eat where I will be treated equally.
I don’t appreciated the discrimination.

i been visiting this restaurant consistently for the last 6 – 7 years. The food is great and service is pretty good.
The wife is picky about her places to eat and this is one of the few that we keep in our list.
Highly reccomended.

I love Vietnamese food. Phở might be one of my favorite things on their menu. I come here a lot for lunch and I can’t complain about the service. I did however notice they have an ant problem. They were going to sit is at a table and ants were devouring a bottle of sugar… Kind of nasty… But they are ants, at least they aren’t roaches…

I love phở. I’m just so darn picky.
My go-​to phở is veggie broth with added shrimp&veggies. Simple, right?
It took quite a while for the server to approach us, I know there is a language barrier when i go to Vietnamese restaurants because unfortunately I can’t speak it. So I always make it a point to be EXTRA nice when I go into one so my food comes out perfect. You see, it’s usually a pretty good tactic. Sadly, the staff all seemed like miserable zombies and were already in a mood.
My boyfriend got a beef phở, which is devoured. He said he’s had better ones but it was still good.
When I had asked the lady for a veggie broth with added shrimp and veggies she didn’t quite understand me. Which is totally cool because she brought another young lady who spoke english perfectly. Probably better than myself. So I repeated myself and she asked me where did I see what on the menu because they don’t make that dish/​bowl. I explained to her that she was correct it wasn’t on the menu it was just veggie broth. (I was expecting to pay extra for the shrimp&veggies) and she said that they didn’t have tofu and ingredients for the vegetarian. I never mentioned I wanted tofu. It was a giant headache. I just told her to bring a bowl of phở I had randomly picked and ordered shrimp on the side, along with veggies (which was like 3 broccoli’s, and 2 baby carrots for $ 8.99). Also, I don’t understand how 2 phở’s and 2 waters ended up being $ 57 dollars. I’ve never had phở so expensive and so tasteless. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, since there aren’t a lot of places in Selma/​Schertz and wanted to like them but I can’t see myself going back there again. There are way too many other wonderful phở places in San Antonio to try.
Pros– The place was very clean and very empty/​quiet. My water was good.
There is nothing worst than bad service and bad food. It’s always usually one or the other. :l

Today was the second time I’ve eaten at this restaurant. I’m still not sure on the staff. They are not the most fun/​happy/​customer friendly wait staff. Not bad but just not good either but the vegetable Phở absolutely makes up for the lack of customer service. Also I wish they would clean their front door. It’s gross. But then again I love the Phở. So since it’s the best phở in my area I’ll have to forgo the staff and lack of a clean front doors.

Vietnamese rolls were yummy and the phở was good. Lots of meat. Service was good as well.

Family run business. Good Phở. So far best in area.
Chinese food is okay.
Service is good and friendly and fast. Very attentive. Prices are reasonable. Our favorite Phở shop.

Ordered vegetable tempura, got shrimp tempura, complained and sent back to get vegetable tempura, got an attitude. Finally got my veggie tempura, sure enough only asparagus and green beans are the only veggies on this plate.
Service is pretty bad.

Finally found a good asian restaurant! Fish sauce chicken wings and beef chow fun please! (BTW, beef chow fun is thick rice noodles with beef. For an asian place, for some reason they arn’t familiar with it being called «beef chow fun» in chinese, so you may have to explain it. I believe it’s #108)
It’s a little expensive compared to California but Texas doesn’t have much options so I don’t mind. It gets the craving done.
Only problem I had is that the workers all assumed I knew vietnamese. When I said I’m sorry I don’t understand, she just stared at me and asked me again in viet… then got 2 other people to ask me in viet also. Girl, just because I’m asian doesn’t mean I’m vietnamese. I just thought it was funny but I still don’t think she figured it out because she still spoke vietnamese to me on the way out.

Meh. I had the beef phở and the meat was both chewy and gristly. The broth was not the best tasting. I also the had the spring rolls and did not enjoy the dipping sauce. Underwhelming and the bill was about $ 30 for two.

Best Asian food for miles!
Every dish that I have ordered has been amazing. Their spring rolls are amazing, I think they roll basil and/​or mint into them.
One weird dish that I get again and again is the salt and pepper squid. If you have ever watched Futurama, then you will feel like you are eating popplers.
Warning: The service might be bad, but the food makes up for it.

My first foret in trying Viet food didn’t go so well. It was as awkward as a 15 yr old boy with sticky fumbling fingers on his first date. I’m not even sure what I ordered was truly representative of the cuisine.
There is a serious issue when there are no pics on most of the dishes, and the staff including owner at the register cannot communicate with me in my tongue. That said, I knew I didn’t want noodles, which it seems most Viet dishes contain noodles either fried or in soup. I did want to try phở, never having tried yet, but they just won’t give samples or sell a small bowl.
I arrived with 45 minutes to close, so options were limited. I probably want to try a hot pot one day. I chose the fish sauce chicken wings and an order of the summer rolls.
— eats:
— fish sauce chicken wings: very crispy, sweet (way too sweet with a honey glaze), and that oh so stinky fermented fish sauce that I like.
— summer rolls: vermicelli and shrimp wrapped with lettuce, basil leaves in a rice paper wrapper with a sweet peanut dipping sauce and topped with crumbled peanuts. As many Asians on here talk about many restaurants having too sweet of sauces and not being authentic, the peanut dipping sauce and the fish sauce chicken wings were way too sweet for me.
— crumbs:
–staff was very nice

After a long day of sitting at a desk I decided to treat myself and look for some Thai on a Friday afternoon. I was actually headed to Bankok Cuisine but they were closed so I settled on A Dong located within the Forum. While it does not give me the typical ambience of the typical Thai Restaurant, it is close to home so decided to give it a try. I ordered the crab and corn soup as my appetizer and settled on the BBQ Pork/​Wonton Soup for my main course.
The soup was fabulous and flavorful with lumps of crab meat (not the fake stuff) but the noodles in my Wonton Soup were a tad hard. The Phở was flavored well and had several juicy pieces of pork. The food seemed fairly priced and I would have given the restaurant a 4 rating if someone had checked on me once to refill my water glass. I saw several platters of food headed to other tables that I cannot wait to try. I will return and hope to give a higher rating on my next visit.
~Satisfied Customer~

«A Dong» simply means «Asian» in Vietnamese. So get over the name, people.
What I like about A Dong is that they have quite an extensive menu with more authentic dishes than other Vietnamese restaurants in SA — such as phở ap chao and fish sauce chicken wings.
Phở ap chao is wok fried rice noodles. The noodles are fried first. Then it is topped with sauteed vegetables and beef or seafood or combo of everything (your choice). The noodles start out crispy and chewy. But will soak up the gravy in the stir fry quickly. So, eat this dish immediately or it won’t be good.
The fish sauce chicken wings can be fantastic depending on who’s in the kitchen. We’ve had this dish 3 different times and they’ve been slightly different each time. On a good day, the wings would come out crispy and lightly coated in this sweet, salty, sticky, spicy sauce. On a bad day, the wings would be soggy and overly coated. So it’s hit or miss.
Other things we’ve tried:
–Spring rolls (cha gio) are tiny, but good
–Shakey beef (bo luc lac) was ok
–Canh Chua Ca (hot and sour catfish soup) — too sweet and too many bean sprouts (I hate bean sprouts). Would not get again.
–Lotus Root Salad (goi ngo sen) with pork and shrimp was decent. The nuoc mam could have been more flavorful.
–Salt and Pepper Calamari — batter was not crispy. But overall, not bad.
–Summer rolls were simple and good.
–Soup broths (we’ve tried phở and hu tieu) were too weak for our taste
–Café Sua Da is served in that drip system contraption and not premade… nice!
Pretty sure we’ve tried other things. Can’t recall right now as this review is long overdue.
So while the food isn’t the best we’ve ever had, we appreciate that A Dong serves up quite a variety of authentic Vietnamese dishes. We always see other Vietnamese families dining here and this is our go to place when my relatives pop in unexpectedly and I don’t have time to cook for the masses.
The thing that really kills it for me is that this place is located in the Forum. Whoever designed the entry and exit points for the Forum (and all of SA’s roads really) was on crack and has a twisted sense of humor. These roads make no sense!
Anywho… final word on A Dong… try them out if you want to try authentic Viet dishes. Skip the Chinese offerings.