When it comes to Vietnamese dining, Greensboro offers plenty of options. With gentle-sounding music and nicely appointed interiors, establishments like Pho Hien Vuong and Vietnamese Garden offer a pleasant dining experience. But if all you care about is getting the most authentic food, then Van Loi is the way to go. Located in a slightly shady strip mall off Farmington Road, it is unlikely to attract the business lunch crowd – or much of a crowd at all. I went there at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday and was the only customer. The white-and-green interior is Spartan, and at least a half-dozen Heineken-and-pho posters adorn the walls.
What Van Loi lacks in ambience, it makes up for in menu variety. In addition to the standard soups, noodle bowls, and rice dishes, you can get BBQ duck or make your own spring rolls. There are also enough dishes featuring random pig parts (brains, blood, etc.) to give Anthony Bourdain a run for his money.
Eschewing the exotic, I opted for a grilled pork-and-egg roll vermicelli bowl. The meat was suspiciously red, though quite tasty and not undercooked. The incorporation of mint was a nice touch, but on the whole, the dish wasn’t markedly better than it was at any of Van Loi’s more Westernized competitors.
Pricing at Van Loi is higher than the rudimentary interior design suggests. Nothing here is unreasonable – my entree was $8 and you can feed yourself for under $10 – but again, it is comparable to the competition. A family-owned restaurant, Van Loi employs minimal staff. This isn’t a problem due to the aforementioned emptiness, but I wouldn’t want to be there on a busy day.
The diversity of the menu makes Van Loi worth at least a second visit, and a sampling of some of the Chinese BBQ items might lead to a reappraisal. But for now, “authenticity” isn’t enough to put Van Loi ahead of Greensboro’s more appealing Vietnamese establishments.
7/10
Van loi is the only authentic Vietnamese restaurant you will find in Greensboro. The lack of ambience is there for the reason that they are not going for a fine dining atmosphere but rather an atmosphere that is authentic and true to the restuarants and streetfood culture that reflect Vietnamese culture. Their food is hands down the best and most authentic od Vietnamese cuisine. Most Vietnamese customers in the Vietnamese community consider their food quality to be far superior than their westernized competitors who have appropiated for westerners' taste. Using Western standards to place critique on a Vietnamese restaurant doesn't exactly seem fitting, especially when in regards to the quality of their food. If you want real Vietnamese food, Van Loi is the place to go. As someone of Vietnamese origin and who has traveled and experienced life in Vietnam, I would recommend this restaurant to all who actually appreciates authenticity.
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