Le Red Tiger

Fantastic food paired with a great laid back neighbourhood atmosphere. There wasn’t a single thing I didn’t enjoy at Le Red Tiger. The beef carpaccio and shrimp pancakes are two dishes I would highly recommend. Thank you for your amazing food, great service, and an atmosphere that made me feel welcome in a neighbourhood I was only a tourist in.

-I started with ‘cote de porc braisé aux cinq épices’, which boasted faultlessly braised pork, tasting fresh and meaty. The minimum that one should expect, indeed, but many eateries are sadly just reheating their braised meats, a laughable mistake that Red Tiger did avoid during this visit. The Nuoc mam particularly inspired on this evening (great punch of acidity and spicyness, but perfectly balanced). And as with everything I ate here, the genuine Vietnamese flavours are genuinely replicated, with refinement, true, but they remain Genuine. This was delicious and well made as with everything I ate there. It is just the tiny portions (all the items I ordered came as tiny portions) that I take issue with, but most of the newly opened restaurants are feeding you with tiny portions, anyways. 7/10 -Pursued with ‘Boeuf et porc roulé dans des feuilles de bétel’ – the quality of the ingredients playing a role in the equation, perhaps, but cooking skills were also required and they shone through: the meat perfectly moist, packed with proper heat (not too hot to burn a palate, but enoughly warm to keep the meaty flavor alive),the taste delicious. Sauces are not an afterthought as the pairing sauce had an exciting depth of flavor, exquisitely sweet rather than cloying and uninspired. 7/10 Red Tiger is the ‘prescription’ to all the quibbles I kept finding with most Asian-style bistrots in town,lately : a grill that is too ‘shy’, food that is trying too much to please everyone, etc. Here, at Red Tiger, the grill ..grills! The food tastes delicious. They may look young and beautiful, which are sometimes attributes that one would not associate with serious cooking, but they made it happen: the cooking here is to be taken seriously. Imagine if they were allowed to grill on charcoal! Red Tiger is serious stuff (though, certainly not the cheapest Vietnamese-inspired eatery that I know in town).

The only reason they get a 3, is due to their food. Even though it is not authentic Vietnamese street food, the food is really good. The service on the other hand… HORRIBLE! The staff looked like they did not want to be there and it brought the entire energy down. It was a really bad experience. This was not just 1 waiter, there were 3 and they all looked miserable.