Anne C.
Yelp
Dinner tonight with some of our favorite urban epicures, and this restaurant was a perfect combo of experiences for our guests.
First of all, and most importantly, the food. We ordered it easily from the ordering kiosks at the front door, and it came out really quickly. We had a broad sample of food from the menu, including tots, egg rolls, pho, vegan pho, garlic noodles, and a banh mi sandwich. Everyone was very happy with their food, which was freshly prepared and all very hot from the kitchen. I appreciated the crispness of the broccoli in my pho (perfectly blanched) and the delicate savory flavor of the pho broth. The tots were fantastic - very hot, very crunchy, just what you want a tater tot to be. The meatballs were very good, there wasn't quite enough sliced beef, and the basil was a little on the tired side, but the bean sprouts, lime, and jalapeno were perfect. Egg rolls were super hot, right out of the fryer, and crisply tasty. I would say the food was a solid 4 to 4.5 out of 5.
The beer wall was awesome and very entertaining. The guests sampled a tiny bit of almost everything and, while they didn't find one they particularly loved, they really enjoyed the opportunity to wander up, pour a little bit of something, and see if they liked it. An added plus was non-alcoholic local root beer and one of my favorite drinks, Seeking Kombucha's Purple Rain, on tap. In addition, this system is great because you're not dispensing one ounce pours - your beer card opens the tap and you pay for what you dispense, whether it's .5 oz or 5 oz. Awesome experience!
The immense TV was great. It was baseball at first (one guest's favorite) and then two of us were delighted that it switched to the Kraken game.
Also - there's a cart of games to play while you are waiting for your food. Our food came out really quickly but we enjoyed playing one of the tabletop games while we were waiting - it was a fun way to pass the time (in addition to watching sports on the giant TV or the smaller TVs).
The only negative was parking. We parked in the Home Plate Garage that's in the same building, got locked in because we were having such a great time at Vinason (we were 7 minutes after the garage closed), had to get let in to the garage, and then could not get out of the garage because the machine won't take metal credit cards AND it ate and would not return our plastic credit card, so we lost a credit card in the machine. Unfortunately a not-great ending to an otherwise awesome evening.