Green Leaf Vietnamese

Address: 418 8th Ave S, Seattle, WA 98104

Phone: (206) 340-1388

Price: 6.95

Rating: 4.0

One of many Vietnamese restaurants in the International District, Green Leaf Vietnamese is the first I have personally tried. As you walk up to the store front you notice a large green leaf sign. From the front door the restaurant looks like a dingy worn down hole-in-the-wall, but to my pleasant surprise the inside was stylish and eloquent. As we walked in I noticed that the place was packed with people and started to worry that we would have to wait to be seated, but we were escorted to the second story that was small but not cramped. The tables and chairs are made of thick stained wood and many framed newspaper articles decorate the walls.

The menu was a full Vietnamese menu, not just pho. All of the food looked very reasonable in price - I didn't notice anything above $10 except a few seafood specials. All of the pho was priced the same amount and had all of the normal fairs with different varieties of beef, veggies, and chicken. I ordered the option that offered the full gambit of beef from meatballs to tripe. Even thought the place was packed the food came quickly.

The condiments looked fresh. The pho was good but was not the best I have ever had. The meat was the highlight - it tasted very good and was definitely quality meat. The meatballs had a good flavor and I doubt they were frozen. The tripe came in a large chunk which I am usually a little weary of but it taste very fresh and not over powering. The broth was what kept this soup from being a truly fantastic bowl of pho. It was thick and dark and it was a little too strong and tasted too much like cinnamon. I enjoy a little bit of a cinnamon taste but it was just a little too much this time. That's not to say that I would not recommend the pho it is probably the freshest I have rated yet, and the broth was only a minor downfall.

My girlfriend, who ate with me, ordered the spicy lemon grass chicken. It was a little too spicy for her taste but I tasted it and would have been happy if I had ordered it myself.

As we walked out I kept looking at other people's dishes and thought to myself, "Man that looks really good. I wonder what it is." I will be going back in the future to find out.