The Dai Viet is a Vietnamese Restaurant in the unassuming East London Suburb of Wanstead. According to Wikipedia Đại Việt (大越 [ɗâjˀ vjə̀t], literally "Great Viet") is the official name of Vietnamese dynasties beginning with the rule of Lý Thánh Tông (r. 1054–1072), the third king of the Lý Dynasty. I think here they mean is is just a great Vietnamese restaurant. Although you cannot tell from the frontage, once you enter, you are in a barn of a place, and it looks like it would be a great place for a party or some other function.
We went there with family of eclectic taste, in fact the same family we went with to eat at the Friendly Thai, but having learned our lesson, we made sure that the ordering was very precise. Whilst the place was not full on a Saturday night, parking in the streets around can be a bit tricky. As it is very close to the tube station, that could be an option.
The staff seemed to be a mixed ability group, and initially we had some difficulty in ensuring our orders had been taken correctly, but we should not have worried, as not only were they correct, but very precisely divided between the group. They have a fairly useful web site at http://www.daiviet.co.uk/ but the whole menu is not there. My wife and I had a set meal for two, and none of the set meals are mentioned on the web site. It was also interesting to note that all dishes containing ostrich had been physically deleted from the menu. There have been various other reviews of the restaurant on TripAdvisor and the like, mostly positive, but the one thing that is repeated is the lack of authentic taste noted by those that have been to Vietnam. I have reviewed my more local Viet cafe (Vynam of Finchley) and noted several times that the food had the authentic taste of the east. I would agree that even though the food here was good, it lacked that particular tang, and was probably more geared to suburban London palates, the caveat being that we did order off a set menu, and would need to go back and try some of the more challenging dishes. There was Viet Beer to drink, and I found it very palatable, and quite middle European in taste.
So here is a catalogue of the meal.
This was a dish of mixed starters with prawn and papaya salad, three kinds of roll, two of which were hot and one was a cold summer roll with prawn and salad. The dark things are grilled minced beef in sapu leaves (rather like a soft kofte mince). All of this was excellent, good quanitities and adequately hot, at about a 7.8 when it was meant to be hot. Next came the king prawn and sweet potato pancakes.
This had a somewhat bland flavour, dominated by the batter and sweet potato, but was an interesting mix of textures, and was freshly fried and hot (9 on the scale). The highlight of the main courses was the so called campfire steak in soy based sauce with leeks, onions, celery and carrots garnished with coriander (sic). This was described in the menu as a stew, and truly was one of the few times when anything has scored a 10/10 on the CHOF scale for the reasons that are clear in the pictures:
At the time of serving, the waiters, clad in black, set fire to flammable liquid under the iron stew pot, which then burns for a few minutes. The good news is that it brings the contents up to boiling point, and therefore leaves it with a CHOF score of 10. As you can see there is a little trickiness in serving yourself from the fiery inferno, but the flames subside. I am not sure what the fuel is, as there was no clear smell of something either good or bad. The stew was accompanied by egg fried rice and an interesting mix of stir fried vegetables: all hot, extremely tasty, but lacking the taste of the east. After discussion, my prior comments may be related to the taste of fish sauce, which was not in evidence here.
There was no desert, but portions of fresh orange were served. All in all, a good experience, but lacking the taste of the east. The set meal costs £21.50 per person with 10% service charge for the somewhat functional service.
Despite the possibly somewhat dumbed-down nature of the set meal, I think we would like a return visit to try some of the more interesting things from the menu.
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