We were in the mood for Vietnamese food so we headed to West Lake for lunch!!  Yeah~  I love Vietnamese noodle bowls~

Upon entering, we noticed that this restaurant had won an award in 2008 from Richmond News for 1st place in the Reader’s Choice Awards category of Vietnamese Restaurant.

This is a pretty large restaurant so they can easily fit a large group of people.  I noticed that the tables were a bit sticky once I sat down so we made sure to check all the plates and bowls before using them.

They have some combos available during lunch time.  I chose to have the A+B and drink (so did everyone at the table) because it was the best value.

I ordered the shrimp salad roll for an appetizer and a seafood vermicelli for the main course.  The combo also came with a drink and I ordered the cold milk tea.  The shrimp salad roll was pretty bland.  I had to put lots of peanut sauce on it in order to actually finish it.  I understand that shrimp and vermicelli itself has no taste, but maybe they could have spiced it up a little bit by adding some herbs or spices?

The seafood vermicelli was the same….tasteless.  The vegetables that they had in the noodle were raw and I had to soak it into the soup for awhile until it was cooked.  The soup didn’t have any seafood taste to it at all.  As well, there were only a couple pieces of shrimp and imitation crab in it.  This was a bit disappointing.  Aww…..

The best part of the meal was the cold milk tea.  It had a good balance of tea, milk and sugar.  It was very refreshing~

Rockia had the deep fried spring rolls, lemongrass chicken with rice and hot almond tea.  These selections were slightly better than mine.

The deep fried spring rolls were good.  It was freshly fried so it was warm when it landed on the table.  There were 4 pieces and I would say that this was the best part of the meal.

The lemongrass chicken was pretty bland as well.  It wasn’t marinated long enough and didn’t have a lot of lemongrass.  The dish was pretty dry and hard to swallow.  There definitely weren’t enough chicken or sauce to go with that large mound of rice.

The almond tea was average.  It’s mixed with powder so it’s pretty much the same everywhere.  Overall, our lunch was a bit disappointing.  The size of the dishes were reasonable and the prices were average.  However, the taste was lacking and some dishes were just bland…..They probably went a bit downhill since receiving that award in 2008….

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