Ever since the first day Andy and I walked down Fraser Street, we wanted to visit Bonjour Vietnam. It has to have one of the coolest interiors I have ever seen. There are flowers all over the roof, lanterns, flamingo wall paper, black and white checkered floor… no part of the restaurant has been forgotten, and enough thought has been put into it that it evokes a ‘wow, beautiful’ reaction instead of a ‘wow, tacky!’ response. It is positively gorgeous, right down to the bathrooms.
The cocktail menu at Bonjour Vietnam is highly innovative and also rather expensive. I saw a cocktail combining amaretto, pineapple and passionfruit AND it came in a goblet, so I just had to order it. Conveniently, it was at the cheaper end of the price list ($13) as there were a number of cocktails that exceeded the $20 mark. Andy, with his anti-cocktail stance, stuck with a Backcountry Brewing beer – classic.
The food menu was exactly what you’d expect from a relatively classy Vietnamese restaurant. There was an appetiser section, with spring rolls, rice paper rolls, chicken wings and other bits and pieces. There was a pho section, mostly beef, but with a chicken option too. There were salads, noodles and rice dishes. Most impressively, there was an entire other menu (not mentioned on the website) for vegetarians! I loved this, and I loved that it basically matched the meat menu except with vegetarian substitutes.
For dinner, we ordered pork spring rolls, prawn and mango salad, chicken pho and chicken fried rice. The spring rolls were some of the best spring rolls I have ever had, and that is having been to Vietnam! The prawn and mango salad was also delicious: fresh, generous and the flavours packed a punch. The pho and fried rice were both good – just bowls of food that were everything they should be and nothing they shouldn’t. We started to fill up as we slurped the pho, so we ended up getting some of the fried rice to take away.
The service was exceptional, the food was extremely tasty and the entire experience was fun and well put together. Prices are on the higher end, but definitely not outside of our price range for a date night. We didn’t order dessert, because unfortunately for the restaurant, it is located on the same block as Earnest Ice cream – and I can never turn down Earnest Ice cream!