Ngon – Hanoi Group

As much as we love exploring new and new-to-us Vietnamese restaurants in Little Saigon, the simple truth is that not every place we visit is going to be a banger. Ngon – Hanoi Group is a prime example. Also listed as Quán Ngon on its website, and younger sibling to the uncomfortably cramped Hanoi Old Quarter, Ngon’s star attraction is a comparatively spacious, attractive interior design that could just as easily be found in a major Vietnamese city as Garden Grove. An elegant wood, metal, and glass entry leads to a dining room with marble-topped tables, nice chairs, and fine padded benches seating perhaps 70 people, lightly but ably staffed during our visit. While the restaurant isn’t as upscale as it initially appears – think wet floor signs in walkways and inconsistent sauce bottles left at tables – it’s a huge improvement over Hanoi Old Quarter.

Ngon’s tri-folding menu looks exactly the same as Hanoi Old Quarter’s except for the fonts, and their drink lists are identical with only one exception: a “special” Hanoi apricot drink, nuoc mo ($7), which we tried to order at Ngon and were told was out of stock. We instead ordered jasmine green tea with “special” mixed passion fruit and peach fruit jam ($6) – a thick, syrupy base that was super-sweet and hard to drink through the straw – and a ca phe sua da ($6) condensed milk coffee that was totally fine.

Menu differences begin with the appetizers, which at Ngon include banh mi que mini baguette sandwiches ($11), crab meat spring rolls ($13/3), and fried dumplings ($12). We ordered and were initially pleased with the banh mis, which were topped with delicate pork floss and loaded with a bitter pate that one of us liked and the other didn’t; the crab meat spring rolls looked amazing and did have obviously crab-flavored filling, but tasted a little overcooked outside, with a weak fish sauce dip that didn’t do much to cover the burnt flavor.

For entrees, we went with two dishes recommended by a friend. From the “soups” section of the menu, we tried the duck noodle soup with bamboo shoots, bun mang vit ($17). Then we ordered one dish from the menu’s “dry food” list, pho bo tron ($17), described as “dry beef noodle mixed.” All of Ngon’s soups and dry dishes are priced between $17 and $20; the menu’s only other sections are “signature dishes” including standard pho, bun, cha ca la vong turmeric/dill fish, banh mi chao, and bun rieu, at price points ranging from $17 to $29. A field crab hot pot for $56 is a major outlier; nothing besides two-person set meals for $47 even approaches that item.