Vientiane is located on the east side of Second Road almost directly across from the eastside entrance to Soi 13-1/Soi Yamato.

Recommended to this place by an English gent who said it had best Vietnamese food. Nice place that is very busy in evening. Two seating sections, air-conditioned room and outdoor seating. Good place to take a date.

Ordered Vietnamese style Fried Spring Rolls and Fried Seafood Combination in Chili Paste no recommendation of waitress. Spring Rolls came with fresh lettuce and noodles. Main course was shrimp, squid, oyster, and crab stir-fried in spicy chili paste with eggplant and capers.

Menu is huge with over 350 numbered selections of Vietnamese, Laos, Thai, Chinese, and European style dishes. My main course was #188.

Waitress provided cool scented cologne towel and bowl of lemon water for cleanup.

Not only does Vientianne have good Vietnamese food, but very good Thai food as well. All of the Thais and foreigners I took there loved the food. Also nicely priced.

CM

Gosh, Cman. I wish I knew you when I was in school. Would you believe I did my 'country report' on Thailand. With all your usefull info, I would have gotten an 'A'. Of course, the PTA would have run my teacher out of town when they find out what he did on his summer vacation.

I am terribly sorry, I shall elaborate a bit more.
Most dishes are around 90 baht. With seafood being more expensive.

The reason they have over 350 different dishes is very simple: Fried rice with beef (1)
Fried rice with Chicken (2)
etc. They number ever variety seperately.
In reality they have about a 100 different Thai dishes.
For those not into Thai food, they also serve nice steaks.

Offcourse when eating in a Thai place, one must order and eat according to Thai dining principles.

Which means that the oldest/richest or most knowledgeable on must order the food for the table.

A good Thai meal consists of 2 or 3 snacks (eggrolls, Satay, Nua det diauw etc.), a curry, a soup, seafood dish, vegetable dish, meat dish.

If ordered well balanced that means that there is something for every guest. At least, so I have been told by Thai friends.

My personal favourites are:
Sun dried fried beef (Nua Det Diauw)
Green Curry with Chicken (Keng Kiewan Khai)
or Penang Curry with beef (Keng Penang Nua)
Shrimps in glass noodles (Kung ok Wunsen)

These dishes would usually feature in a meal ordered by myself. Offcourse no meal is complete without a fish and the fried egg with miced meat.
All of these dishes are available in Vientianne and their style of preparing is one if the best in my opinion. Offcourse everybody's taste buds differ.

Hope this helps you a bit more.

CM

Been eating at this place for the last 6 months or so. GREAT food!! If you have a girl from Issan, they will go NUTS here as the menu sports quite an extensive collection of Lao favorites.

Personally, I like the Vietnamese springrolls, the Thai garlic & pepper fish at 65B/100grams) and they sport a list of Chinese dishes as well...

E

For those who know lipton from Pho, where's the best Pho @ in pattya or bangkok?

Also one of my favortite places. They have moved to Walking Street next door to Nual Ngual (also very good). Both restaurants are just south from FLB and have seaside seating.

I'm sure this change in location required new menus with higher prices, yes?

E

No, prices are about the same. I took my favorite girl and one of her friends there the other night, Four dishes and 5 glasses of good red wine were well under 2000 bhat including a generous tip. The food was VERY good.

G

Did Nual Ngual the night before. Ordered shushi, cow pat kuhn, and some incredible poo cakes, with a bottle of great red wine for under 2000 Bhat. The katoey waitress laughed at me for doing a double take, but appreciated the tip.

G