Ga Bistro

Food was great. I've been a few times and would definitely come back. Some portions are way too big, some are too small. It's hard to know which could be shareable vs for yourself only. Service was friendly, the team was accommodating for dietary restrictions and did a great job recommending options. Also, for the premium pricing already, I wish they would take credit card instead of insisting on cash or debit. Just bake the credit card processing fees in the over pricing. It's more convenient for customers.

Last weekend we drove down from the Bay to OC for a little vacation, I love to try new places and visit some of the old restaurants that I and my wife like because after a long drive, we don’t want to waste our time there. My friends took us to a new restaurant called Ga Bistro (chicken bistro). The place looks quite nice and presentable, it’s supposed to be a middle level $$ restaurant. So with the name Ga (chicken) and we expected it to be a restaurant for Chicken, they must be mastered and specialized with chicken, but we’re disappointed. 3 stars is for the beautiful ambience, the place is clean and well decorated. The music station was excellent, soothing with great jazzy tunes and beautiful voice of the singer. 1 additional star is for attentive and fast service from these young and professional servers. The food gets no star. They created many different special plates, chicken 5 styles, chicken on a platter (mâm) but the cooking is mediocre, I cook better than this. All the chicken meats have no taste whatsoever, totally flat, but my friend who vowed for this restaurant insisted on the sauce that come with the dishes. My wife said the sauce weren’t tasty either, everything is on the sugar sweet side, so if the chicken is flat, no flavor and the sauces are not tasty then what make the food excellent? None. My friend and my wife agreed that the steamed chicken (organic supposedly) was over cooked and the meat was too soft (bở), you can’t taste the sweetness of the supposedly fresh chicken. All the 5 styles nothing was good enough to be noticeable. The chicken gizzards and livers were so bad, flat and still intestinal smelly. For appetizers, the only thing that we all agreed on the best was the soft shell crabs deep fried, cajun calamari was hard and not very tasty, must dip in a special green sauce but the texture wasn’t very tender. The snails were eatable but nothing to scream for, they’re all hard and not very tasty, if you cook snails, the sauce must be flavorful and overcome the snail odor and flat taste. So I couldn’t eat much of chicken dishes, I ordered shaking beed noodles, couldn’t go wrong with beef. The dish was quite OK, not as good as many other restaurants but tasty enough to eat. Anyhow, it’s a nice restaurant for dated to come on the weekend Friday, Saturday, good ambience, may be a little romantic, listening to nice music and order something but chicken dish like mi bo luc lac, shaking beef noodles.

The owner or manager is incredible and the food is awesome. Kind of a funny service night, but it was very busy so we chalk it up to that. The manager or owner definitely made it a great experience and takes pride in his restaurant. Like I said, the food is awesome! We will definitely be going back.