Hoa Sen - Nha Hang Chay

The food is pretty good. Lots of options. Little expensive but not bad. It is super busy and seems understaffed. It can be quite dirty, with dishes everywhere. The service is really bad. I'm sure some servers are doing their best. But the girl we had was terrible. We didn't get half the food we asked for. And she just generally walked around aimlessly while we didn't get the food we ordered for a long time. Even the spring rolls that are ready made and we could have walked over ourselves to grab. I'd go here again. But don't expect world class service.

In Asia we use to eat outside in strange looking places but this was esspecially disgusting and extremelly dirty. However the place have some good reviews so we give it a chance. What a mistake. I had tofu with mashrooms in some kind of strange sauce (should be pepper sauce) the only taste it had was the taste of burned garlic. I ordered rice as side dish. they have brought large bowl (I ate barely half of it) and it costed 30 000. I also had rice dumpling which was disgusting and contained extra hair. only eatable thing was filling which also tasted a bit funny.

This restaurant made me write my first really bad review ever and go thru registration process at happy cow and that us the only remarkable thing to say about it.

At the 'pricier' end of the spectrum (except when being ripped off blind by shabby hole-in-the-wall 'com chay', which always costs more), the soups and salads we tried here were always top notch. Green papaya salad is not to be missed!!



Updated from previous review on 2016-12-21

Great restaurant with extensive options. Breakfast options such as soups available also.

Super busy restaurant with big menu (English translation). Tried various dishes and all were great.

We enjoyed this place. The food is really good and we went there couple of times.
The service quality is a bit like gambling. some waiters are really nice while others not at all. the place it self doesnt look that nice but its not expensive for a restaurant.

Really good phó ( we had the mushroom phó) with bành bao, which was also very good and tasty.. You get lots of greens and sprouts with your meal. Prices are a bit in the higher end ( for a backpacker) but well worth the money :)

We came here for a late lunch, and we were well fed! we ordered a combination hot pot, two spring rolls, fried eggplants and some weird tofu fried thing.
All were amazing.
Would strongly recommend the fried Eggplant appetizer.

Came here on recommendation from Happy Cow and was not disappointed. Great food, VERY CHEAP, and the staff is super friendly. I enjoyed it so much I came back three times in two days!

Huge menu with lots of interesting mock meat options as well as really good veg dishes. The 'chicken' and the braised tofu are amazing.

Went there twice as we really liked it, prices are more than reasonable for the food you get. But: they have a really extended menu when there aren't so many people in the restaurant, which was the case during our first visit (8:15pm). We even had two dishes we never had before, during our five vegetarian weeks in Vietnam! Unfortunately they don't serve a lot of the "special" foods if there are a lot of customers... Food was still good:)

We had 2 dishes, the "like beef" which was in a clay pot and made of Gluten, and the "like pork" made of Tofu. Especially the first delicious! Very well seasoned.
I agree the plates were more expensive. Both 50.000 dong, but big and we thought the beef was the best dish so far in 4 veggie restaurants in Vietnam.

Big place and good location for tourists. A bit more familiar feeling than the ubiquitous tiny local veggie places scattered around the city (and not on Happy Cow). Okay food and great bahn mis.

We just ate dinner here on our last evening in Da Lat and are feeling regretful about all the delicious meals we could've eaten if only we'd gotten ourselves to Hoa Sen sooner.

The restaurant was pumping early on a Saturday evening. Other reviewers have mentioned that no English is spoken here but the waitress who took out order spoke English well. Having read about the fresh spring rolls so was keen to try those but they were out so they recommended the glutenous rice flour dumpling. Wrapped in pandan leaves, it's translated on the menu as "pyramidal" dumpling. The dumpling itself is not as rubbery as it looks, it's actually quite tender and has a slightly salty flavour of its own, although the filling of mushrooms, root veggies, and tofu julienned is the star here. We also shared one of the bao to start which had a similar filling to the dumpling but with a peppery seasoning. The bun was fluffy, slightly sweet and tasted a bit coconutty to me as well.

We ordered two main dishes which, while small, were plenty for the two of us with steamed rice. The chilli tofu was three big chunks of perfectly puffy fried tofu with a chilli and lemongrass seasoning. We also ordered "spicy vegetables" or something like that, thinking some greens would be a good balance to the tofu. The dish that arrived was very thinly sliced onions, quickly stir fried with a fake chicken type protein with similar seasoning to the tofu. Not what we expected but still delicious...just made for a pretty unbalanced meal in the end. When ordering vegetable dishes, I recommend choosing those where the actual name of the vegetable is translated if you want a better idea of what you're getting!

Unlike other reviewers, we found the service efficient and not unfriendly. What more can you expect? It's not fine dining. Ditto to the decor. The lighting is fluorescent, the floor is tiled but there are some nice touches like small indoor water features with steam and coloured lights. I think there's another seating area upstairs where it looked like the lighting might have been warmer and lower. Still, it's not the place to linger over dinner. Just enjoy your meal and get on with your life!

This is a traditional, large Vietnamese Buddhist restaurant. You will see people inviting the monks etc there. As such, it is a good Vietnamese experience, but not the small "Quan" for everyday.

The food is good, but typical also. This means a wide range. My VN friend liked the food and she is very choosy, so it gets an authentic tick. It does stand up well to other places. The prices are standard.

We had a hotpot (Lau) one time, and rice another time.

For some reviewers complaining about the lack of flavour, the problem is a lot of VN vego dishes are not strong. But something braised with pepper (kho tieu) or Tofu with lemongrass and chili (Dau hu xa ot) are stronger, and it is traditional to add chili or sauce at the table.

Lastly, comments about free tea made us laugh - that is standard for the vast majority of local restaurants and cafes in Vietnam.

It is 4.5/5 as a real VN place that I enjoyed. Have to round it up to 5 for HC!

Prices were quite expensive for Vietnam - cheapest at 35000 VND for a plate of veg, and then progressively higher for rice and noodles. You can't really order a main dish, so for 2 people it would work out quite expensive to get 4 things for a whole meal. In a lot of Veg restaurants in Vietnam you can get a simple main of white rice + veg, or pho for around 15000 VND.

Ordered bok choy and mushrooms (good) and water spinach with ginger (turned out to also be boy choy and without much ginger). We ate a glutionous rice dumpling wrapped in a banana leaf from the take-away stand out the front too (8000 VND each) as this was much better value!

One of our favorites in Vietnam. Ate here 3 times in 2 days, including sandwiches from their lunch cart out in front of the sit down restaurant. Large menu, seems to be all vegan. Packaged cookies for sale were delicious and one of the few places we found baked goods in the whole country. The sandwiches were the best deal, $.75 each for take-away, but the rest of the menu was relatively inexpensive as well. Great location (just 2 blocks from the Dreams hotel with it's own amazing breakfast buffet).

Menu had English translation, lots of variety, tasty food

The food was great. Large menu. Super fresh. Good service. Delicious shakes. Great value. (Each entree is about $2). Five entrees, 3 shakes and tea for 3 ppl was $12 total.
Updated from previous review on Monday February 25, 2013

This place was one of the most cleanest restaurants we've been in almost three weeks in Vietnam. They offer a wide range of meals. The fresh spring rolls are delicous, and so is the Hot Pot.
Almost no english is spoken here, and they only offer alcohol-free beer, but the tea and as well as the juices are very good!
We've been to this place twice and would love to have one restaurant of this kind nearby in Germany :-)

We ate there twice but didn't like the cooked food too much (we had the mushroom hotpot, fried tofu malaysian style, sauteed vegetables) as it was boring and with hardly any taste.

However, the fresh spring rolls (7000 dong per piece) are served with a delicious peanut sauce and are the best we had so far - and we tried many! Also, the take-out sandwiches are very good and great value.

We ate twice at Hoa Sen, and got to-go items from the little stand in front of the restaurant twice.

I wasn't crazy about the crab vermicelli soup, but the Hue soup was good. Be aware that the won ton noodle soup does not contain any won ton! Unless I was brought the wrong dish, I suspect that the "won ton soup" has won ton, and that the "won ton noodle soup" has all of the same broth and veggies as the "won ton soup" but instead of won ton, it just has vermicelli. I was a bit disappointed, as I thought I'd be getting both won ton and vermicelli. You live and you learn.

The coconut shake is delicious (fresh coconut and ice blended), the three beans milk good, and the tea is tasty as well. We at the ice and suffered no ill effects.

We also tried the banh bao (good), and two types of spring rolls (also both good). The banh mi is tasty and super cheap (only 10k). My favorite thing might have been the savory banana-wrapped steamed cakes sold in front (I'm not even sure what they're called) for 8k. We had them once, and I tried to go back later to get more but they were sold out.

There is a small selection of packaged cookies near the front. We tried the ones that are rolled up like fat straws, and they were excellent. Only 25k for a fairly large bag of them, too.

Overall, while this wasn't the very best restaurant we tried in Vietnam, it was quite good. It's clean, and the prices are very low. I wish we had one like this in Toronto.

Bonus: there's a cute resident dog who looks like Falcor who can sometimes be seen wandering around in or near the restaurant.

During my 10 days tour in Dalat,I almost having my meals here daily. On one occasion. I ordered the dish of braised tofu, to my surprised,its texture as spongy as hard rock! As I never tasted such tofu in my life like that elsewhere. I suspect that it used a kind of frozen mocked meat ingredients. I was disappointed with it.

My husband and I were actually looking for a Au Lac, but stumbled upon Hoa Sen and decided to give it a try. We were very pleasantly surprised with the quality of food. We had vegetable bread, malaysian tofu, fresh spring rolls, and a spicy beef pho all for about 4 U.S. dollars. The staff doesn't speak any English, but much of the menu is translated.

It looks upmarket from the outside but seriously lacks atmosphere once inside. Minimal (not in a trendy way). Clean enough.

Almost no english spoken but they have some dished translated into english on the menu.

The food was OK - well presented but not that tasty. The service mediocre. The free white tea was nice. Popular with young Vietnamese dating couples which is sweet.

3 dished came to £2.