Caphe Guests is a Vietnamese restaurant that opened in late January 2015. It is in a parade of shops at the unfashionable end of Chiswick, and possesses simple but quite smart décor. The menu was vast, with page after page of options. There were a couple of dozen wines on offer with no vintages listed, ranging from £14.95 to £49.95. Il Paradossa Inzolia Chardonnay was £15.70 for a bottle that you can find in the high street for £8, Adam Gewürztraminer was £25.65 for a label with a shop price of £14, and Laurent Perrier NV champagne was £49.95 compared to a retail price of £36.
A savoury pancake known as “banh xeo” was filled with beansprouts, pork and beef and served with a little salad and fish sauce. The pancake was fine but the beef inside was a little stringy (11/20). A Vietnamese salad with prawns was the dish of the night, with shredded carrots, courgettes and onions and a spicy sweet chilli sauce with just the right amount of bite to lift the dish, and the prawns tender albeit lacking in flavour (12/20).
Sizzling chicken in black bean sauce was served in a hot iron wok, and although the vegetables with it were cooked well enough, the chicken itself lacked any real flavour; the dish could have done with a bit more spice to liven it up (11/20). Prawns with tamarind sauce was another decent enough dish, the prawns cooked properly, the tamarind sauce providing a hint of sweetness (11/20). Choy sum (a brassica that is part of the mustard family) was lightly stir-fried in a wok with garlic, and was pleasantly tender (12/20).
Service was friendly and efficient, the bill coming to £29 a head, with beer to drink. Caphe Guests is a local restaurant rather than somewhere that you would journey to, but it is better than many of the other Asian restaurants in this area. The cooking was capable, the service friendly and the prices acceptable. I would happily go back.
Further reviews: 16th Jun 2015
Del
30 quid? Nowhere else in the western world would you pay that sum for such basic fare. I know that it would certainly be laughed at in Australia, itself an expensive place!