Sen Ha Thanh Restaurant

I went to Sen Restaurant for lunch with my friends today as one of them wanted to test the "authencity" of its Vietnamese cuisine before bringing her guests there. (Coincidentally, this was the same restaurant that M recommended when I asked him for suggestions the night before.) The restaurant is 3 storey high, with buffet served as levels 1 and 3. It was very crowded when we arrived so we could only get seats at level 2.

There was a queue outside the restaurant!

I like the signboard a lot...

This is what I call a GRAND entrance...

I was quite impressed by the interior decor and spaciousness of the restaurant. There were a couple of fairly nice paintings that brought a cheerful atmosphere to the eatery.

The picture here doesn't reflect it too well...
but this couplet stood out as we walked down the stairs

The variety of food is fairly wide with grilled items, small selection of Japanese cuisine, salad bar, Vietnamese selection of bun, mien (noodes) and banh (pies), dessert bar with fruits, cakes and Vietnamese che (sweet soups) and some stir-fried items like vegetables, rice and meat. I thought the Vietnamese selection was fairly good while stir-fried and Japanese items were so-so. I didn't try the grill selection though as I felt more herbivorous today but my friends agreed that it was nice. To me, the desserts were the most "beckoning". I was drooling over the yam soup and glutinous rice soup, and trying out the different variations of "mochis". Yums!

I like the Bun Oc here...

The desserts were yummy!

However, the service was not as good as we expected. K ordered a cup of earl grey tea and the waitress wrongly served her with mint tea, followed by Lipton tea. Eventually, she was told that they had run out of Earl Grey and she had to settle for Ginger tea. I was thinking, how can you run out of teas when the restaurant has just opened for lunch?

The cost of the buffet per pax came up to VND 198,000 (around SGD 19), which I consider to be expensive in Hanoi since most of the items were Vietnamese dishes. But it does seem to be a fairly popular place amongst the locals which surprised me. Personally, I thought the buffet at Brother's Cafe was more value-for-money but the ambience here is definitely better if you have guests coming by.

P.S. In case you are wondering, I took the above pictures after lunch which explained why the selection looked quite pathetic. The real selection was much more than shown.

Sen Ha Thanh
177 Bui Thi Xuan
Hai Ba Trung, Hanoi
Tel: 9744 192/93