Minh's Vietamese Restaurant
- Price Range: $$
- Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
- Parking: Street
- Attire: Casual
- Good for Groups: Yes
- Good for Kids: Yes
- Takes Reservations: Yes
- Delivers: Yes
- Take-out: Yes
- Waiter Service: Yes
- Good for: Dinner
- Alcohol: Full Bar
21 Reviews for Minh's Vietamese Restaurant
Friendly staff, and reasonable in price. The soups at this place are very good.
The sweet-and-sour dishes are excellent: they use a lighter sauce than the usual gummy pink stuff beloved of Chinese restaurants, so the flavors of the ingredients come through nicely.
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Minh's really shouldn't be compared to Pho 75... The ONLY thing they have in common is that they both serve pho. But while Pho 75 pretty much serves pho and only pho, Minh's is a full service Vietnamese restaurant. While Pho 75 is quick and cheap, Minh's provides things such as real service, ambiance, a full service bar, and a much expanded menu (while also remaining both quick and cheap).
The ambiance of Minh's is upscale yet casual. A good first date type of setting. The menu is extensive and everything I've tried has been excellent. I make sure to order both the spring rolls and shredded pork rolls when I go. Both are delicious. In my experience, you really can't go wrong with anything on their menu. As for the pho, it is very good as well. For the quality and quantity of food you get, the prices are outstanding. I don't think you can get much better value anywhere around.
As to the complaints about service... I've been to Minh's several times and always received outstanding service. I've always been seated immediately, my glass is nearly never empty, and my food comes out hot in a timely manner. I've also ordered to-go from Minh's on a couple of occasions and each time my food has been ready when they said it would be and I was promptly attended to when I came to pick up my food.
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After living near here for about a year, I finally tried this place with my wife. I noted the previous criticisms about service before going. I also noted comparisons with Pho 75 just down Wilson Blvd a piece.
I found the service to be very good. The waiter was attentive, but not overly so and the food came out within a reasonable time. I had curry chicken and my wife had lemongrass chicken. Both were very good, but neither was the best I've had. Thus, I give it four stars.
The ambience was nice. Certainly much nicer than Pho 75. I can't compare the pho, but maybe next time I'll try it and do a comparison.
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The service can be somewhat terrible depending on when you come. However, the grilled meat entrees on vermicelli are delicious, and you can almost always get a seat outside in the summer (I'd often come here with my dogs).
The pho is pretty good as well, but I wouldn't say it's my favorite pho around. However, as other reviewers have mentioned, they have a large menu so if you're going with group there should be something to satisfy everyone, even the non-pho-eaters.
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Almost completely camoflaged by the corporate office building it inhabits, Minh's is some damn good Vietnamese food. Everything is light, fresh and bursting with flavor. The staff is overly attentive, while the service tends to be a tad slow, but cooking a quality meal takes time. While it might fill up your entire lunch hour, its well worth it. My particular fave are there vermicelli dishes with grilled meat and spring rolls, they cut up the spring rolls into bit size slices and top your dish with them. Also the grilled pork and shirmp with thin noodles is an out of control taste explosion. Go here, stuff your face and leave feeling like you ate at least a partially healthy meal.
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What a great little find! It's right up the street from where I live, so the fact I found it only a month before my move out date is a bit of a downer :( I ordered a chicken dish...it's mentioned on the washingtonpost review. I loved it, but i love spicy food, and that may have something to do with it. I ordered to go. The restaurant was pretty empty...but it was a cute little place...just a predictable looking vietamese looking place...nice staff...I'd just recommend take out. Extensive menu...pretty cheap...why not?
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All because of Minh's I've taken Pho 75 down to four stars... This place is a good restaurant with good decor and the best Vietnamese food within a 20 mile radius of DC.
It IS a little pricier than Pho 75, so when I'm hung over I go over to the $5 Pho 75 down the road. But if I'm going to a Vietnamese dinner I'd be an idiot to go anywhere else.
I wouldn't normally give it 5 stars, but it earned it being the best Vietnamese anywhere around here.
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Well known within the Vietnamese community for upscale, clean and straightforward food, Minh's is a wonderful destination for a great experience. In the mood for pho and not in the mood for a stinky-sauna (c'mon, you know when you visit Pho 75, it's required that you take a shower immediately afterwards)? Try Minh's-aromatic, fresh broth. I've had samplings of other dishes and have had equal delicious experiences.
The reviewers below have done a wonderful job of summarizing this quaint, hidden gem in Courthouse.
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So far, we have only ordered takeout from Minh's. Both times, I have gotten the grilled pork vermicelli and it is amazing! The pork is always nicely crispy and blackened on the outside with a perfect combination of sweet saltiness. The vermicelli noodles are al dente and the sauce and veggies are excellent. My only complaint is that I love the herbs in this dish (cilantro and mint) and I wish they would put more in. We have also ordered grilled beef which is good but as we say in my house, "pork fat is better."
I definitely want to try eating at this restaurant. It is a hidden gem, tucked into the ground floor of an unassuming office building between Clarendon and Rosslyn. They have a cute, but small patio outside that looks charming for a warm summer night.
Update: We had takeout from Minh's again. We ordered Pho for the first time with cooked and raw beef and it was AMAZING!! We also had the grilled pork broken rice and of course some crispy pork spring rolls. Minh's pork fat makes the world go round!
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Way more elegant than a lot of Vietnamese places and oddly set apart from the usual Eden Center fare. Instead, it's in Court House, not far from the strip of "old school" Viet places in Clarendon.
Great, wonderful authentic food at nice prices. Try the soft shell crabs when they're in season. If the soft shells aren't in season, try just about anything else. They'll accommodate large groups easily and the people are really, really nice.
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Good food at a great price -- very friendly staff, but lacking in service. It might be that they are just understaffed -- but both times I ate at Minh's the service was spotty. The food is quite good -- and most of the grilled meats are nicely spiced and grilled (as mentioned, a little blackened and crispy).
I do think there are better Vietnamese places in the area (though not in the immediate area).....Minh's is just a nice place to enjoy a good meal at a very decent price.
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What a pleasant surprise! This Vietnamese restaurant at the bottom of a garden variety Clarendon-area office building is a delight! Maybe it helped that we went here on a beautiful early evening, the heavily-windowed restaurant brightened even more by the sun that seeped through the window hangings. Our combination appetizer dish of shrimp tempura, spring rolls, and another variety of rolls with a mildly spicy fish sauce and peanut sauce accompanying were outstanding. My shredded pork and spring roll on vermicelli was surprisingly flavorful. My only complaint: not enough pork. Still, quite good. The lemon chicken was also outstanding--cooked very well.
Don't get intimidated by the menu. Though it appears book-like, each section ("Vermicelli," "Chicken," etc.) actually just consists of various combinations of the same couple of dishes. For instance, the vermicelli section merely lists several combinations of the same foods: a couple of pork preparations, beef, chicken, and spring rolls.
Minh is definitely worth a visit, even if you can't stand the idea of leaving D.C. for culinary purposes (which, my dear friends, you need to get over, because D.C. is not that big!). My only complaint: the service was pretty inept. Though it was competent in terms of bringing us the right dishes and giving us some pointers (i.e., matching the sauces to the different appetizers that we ordered), the waiters were amazingly slow. I'm actually hesitant to check "waiter service" for this place, though I know that's technically what it has. Though, we enjoyed a long, pleasant dinner, I wouldn't have minded shaving 20-minutes off. Still, great food.
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I really like this place for some reason. It's very quiet and sedate, with a tasteful, fresh decor. They have a large (100+ item menu) which I haven't fully sampled. The food is prepared quite cleanly- less oily than you will find it at other possibly more authentic places. I am one of those people that prefers things that taste better over things that are more authentic. On that note, the food at Minh's surpasses or equals that of any of the other Northern Virginia favorites such as Huong Que.
They have a lot of "bun" dishes, pho style noodles minus the broth, which are good. The grilled meats and fish in caramel are my top choices. I have had pretty good luck with the specials as well. The service is okay, some dishes take a while to prepare, and communication is minimal while you wait.
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I have a confession: I hate leaving DC. There's something about crossing the river (or um, going under it?) that immediately nixes options off my list. I'll glance at a Yelp review from Alexandria or Arlington, but, to be honest, if it doesn't say DC I barely give it a second look. The full reasoning behind this is not fit for a review, but I'll tell you what I will leave DC for: Minh's.
Second confession (sorry to get so personal Yelpers): I love pho.
Minh's is tucked right behind the Clarendon Whole Foods, in the ground floor of an office building. A spacious interior, not too big or small, I'm always seated promptly upon entering. Waiting for water or to simply order subsequently takes a little longer than feels comfortable, always crossing the line from having enough time to read the extensive menu (which curry? seafood? pork? chicken?) to becoming ravenous and wondering if you'll have to steal food from the diners sitting next to you. Thus, what would have been a four-star review drops down to three as I've never NOT had to wait over ten minutes to receive attention from a waitress, and water is rarely refilled throughout the meal.
It is easy to overlook long waits when the offerings are this good, however. I'm sure I could eat multiple orders of the combination rice rolls every day for months and not tire of them ($4.95 for two rolls in four pieces; rice paper wrapped around rice vermicelli, various herbs, pork, and shrimp with a spicy peanut sauce). The pho is so much better than the subpar versions you're getting in DC that you can literally smell the difference. The luscious smell of the broth does wonders for my hunger even before I've taken a bite. The small order of pho ($6.95) is always enough for me and, surprisingly, my bottomless-pit boyfriend, and always causes me to pause mid-meal and wonder if i should stop eating then and take the remainders home to savor. Greed and the sad fact that pho does not keep well always prevent this, however, and I always leave Minh's quite full.
Though I wish I could talk about the other amazing dishes at Minh's, every time I return the thought of pho drives me away from the curries, rice dishes, and so forth. I've never seen an unhappy face here, however, so I'm confident that your stomach will find a happy ending here.
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I first started going to Minh's about four or five years ago. I love these beef ribs that they have only on the dinner menu, but bless them, they make it for me at lunch, too. I've been reading that the service is bad by other reviewers. I've always found it to be great, but I guess I'm a bit of a regular. The female owner recognizes me and we always talk if she's around. Go for the raw spring rolls. Admittedly, I love fried stuff, but these are worth ordering. The pork vermicelli is also out of this world. The pho is good, but if you want a real pho place there's the one at the strip mall on Wilson just past Rosslyn toward Courthouse that's to die for. I think it's called Pho 76, but I'm not sure.
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GREAT PORK! perfectly cooked, amazing, alittle $$ for what you get, but really good charboiled pork.
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The service here is lacking (the server filled up my friend's glass which was 3/4 full and neglected to do the same for mine which was empty!). The food is not as good as some of the other Vietnamese restaurants you'd find in Eden Center. However, it is in Arlington and at least they have their own free parking lot.
I only come here really for the steamed escargots. Sounds gross, but it's delicious (and you have to dip it in the fish sauce).
I am not sure why people are so impressed with the food at this place or why it tops Washingtonian's top 100 restaurants. We did NOT have a great experience. The food was mediocre at best. I am not sure what people love about the flavors because I had better Vietnamese in the Eden Center. The service is atrocious. They must be understaffed/overworked because it has been a while since I experienced our table and those surrounding us, getting such poor service. To name of a few things: waiting forever (when the place was NOT busy) to order drinks ( I did not get mine even after asking for it 15 mins after the order and actually had to get up and go to the bar area to get it myself...I was not the only one), the food took forever to arrive and was semi-cold, and the dessert a friend ordered came frozen....as in a solid rock. The dessert she ordered was a "chocolate souffle"...perhaps not the best choice in a Vietnamese restaurant but still. When the dessert came out I noticed that it was no souffle, rather a Dr. Oetker equivalent of a lava cake type dessert. When my friend told the waitress that it was frozen and that this kind of thing needs to be warmed up in the oven, she looked puzzled. The waitress answered "Oh this is supposed to be warm???" to which we all nodded yes. She took the dessert and came back with it (mostly cooked a no longer rock solid) 15 mins later. In addition, the place does not exactly seem clean. Someone is getting paid off to rate this restaurant so high on Washingtonian because this restaurant has no place on their top 100 list. Perhaps others here had a better experience, but I will not be going back.
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this place has great food for a great price, as jennifer s. said. good menu, good service, and it's much bigger than i thought it was, looking from the outside.
it's also kinda nice that it's a little ways farther down wilson than the more "popular" area, so you won't have as hard a time finding street parking (in my experiences), or a crazy large crowd there.
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The food is great and becomes even better when you see the prices!
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Housed beneath the EIA building (the org that puts on the Electronics show in Vegas every year) and a bank (but I cannot remember which one), this quiet and unassuming restaurant space is much more elegant inside than you would imagine, the food is really good, the prices are reasonable and the service is attentive and patient (I ask a lot of questions). Minh's has frequently made The Very Best Restaurants list while also making the Cheap Eats list. That's a good set of criteria for checking out a restaurant, no?
Going through the menu is like reading War & Peace, but persevere and you are bound to find some dishes that will soon become favorites (don't forget to check out the daily specials just to make your decision even harder). I am a big fan of the Combination Rolls (made with tofu if you ask) - I could eat a meal of just these alongside one of their many specialty frozen drink concoctions (and the many Asian beer selections). I also like the Shrimp Cake which is a fritter made of shrimp and yam. The soups are also really good and I have ordered them in the past from Dr. Delivery when I've been sick (Vietnamese penicillin? Maybe!). I am partial to the chicken entrees like the Chicken with Mint (favorite), Chicken with Lemongrass and Ginger Chicken, but the Tofu Curry is also a hit. I don't eat meat, but any of my friends who have ordered these dishes have also really enjoyed them. Overall, I've never had a bad thing to eat, poor service or been in apoplexy over the prices here. I highly recommend you try it.
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