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Saigon 75 (Closed) (Vietnamese cuisine)  $$

 8.25
JaT Rating

304 E Santa Clara Street, San Jose, 95112  (Directions)


408-286-4900


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Upscale vietnamese restaurant with inexpensive prices and nice atmosphere


Reviewer: Jason
Total Reviews: 1007
Reviewed: 3/24/2007
Rating: 8
My photo gallery 		Thanks to David for submitting Saigon 75. Saigon 75 is a beautiful Vietnamese restaurant located in downtown San Jose. There's parking on the street and within walking distance to San Jose State University. The menu has a wide selection of traditional vietnamese dishes and power lunch specials for $7 - $12. Each special comes with your choice of drink, soup, and main course.

We started off with grilled shrimp spring roll appetizer (image 7). The rolls are wrapped in a rice wrapper stuffed with green leaf, vermicelli rice noodles, and grilled shrimp. The rolls were accompanied with a dash of Sriracha and Vietnamese dipping sauce. The sauce tasted like a mix of chili, fish sauce, sugar, and lime? Decent sauce but too heavy on the fish sauce. Overall, I wasn't too impressed with rolls that had tiny servings of shrimp. I'd probably skip out on this appetizer.

For my main course, I ordered Grilled Pork with brown rice (image 11,12). Sporting the trendy plates, the items were laid out nicely. Real salad greens and I love they didn't charge extra for the brown rice. My pork had charred grill marks and a sweet flavoring. Meat was tender and cooked medium. I did have one complaint as one of my pieces was absolutely raw. I would've returned it but ate most of my dish by then.

Saigon 75 has an attractive atmosphere to match the beautiful dishes. Menu prices are budget conscience yet portion sizes enough to fill the tummy. I liked my lunch at Saigon 75 and would have no hesitations on making a return visit.
 


Reviewer: Terry
Total Reviews: 738
Reviewed: 3/23/2007
Rating: 8.5
My photo gallery 		Saigon 75 was Jason's pick today, and I wasn't sure what to expect. I drove and when Jason mentioned it was in downtown San Jose I got scared. Parking in downtown on Friday. Wonderful.

Saigon 75 is kind of removed from the main downtown area, so finding parking on the street (free parking even) was not a problem. We enter the place and it looks really nice. Freshly redone in a bamboo motif. Tables are spread out and there is plenty of stuff on the walls, and all around, to look at. The service was quick. We were given menus. The Power Lunch specials immediately caught my eye. I went with the tofu and vegetables dish, with soup and rice. I also ordered a passion fruit tea.

The tea arrived first. Pretty much what I expected. Watered down fruit tea. Not bad, not the greatest. Probably won't order again. The soup came out quickly. It was like an egg drop soup with tofu chunks in it. Tasty, and a bit thicker in consistency than normal egg drop soup.

My dish arrived and it looked like a lot of food. It was a huge dish piled with a lot of veggies and a tremendous amount of tofu. The sauce it was marinated in was a thick brown sauce with a LOT of garlic in it. I found this dish to be really really tasty. The garlic was definitely overpoewring, but I like it, so it wasn't a problem for me. The tofu was thick and very flavorful. The sauce pretty much took over. The brown rice supplied was good. Its not often I eat brown rice and it really went well with this dish.

I would definitely return again. Prices were pretty low, and I left stuffed. We were talking about doing a bakery across the street, but changed our minds. I was super stuffed. I could fit no more food in. I can't wait to return and sample this dish again. The fried yams that people were ordering also looked very delicious. Supposedly its their speciality.
 
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Jason ate...

Closed

“Looks like a sushi place is opening in their spot.”

8/29/2008 9:52:22 PM

budbandit ate...

What dish did you eat?

“fried rice was good, mango fries odd, shrimp appetizer were unshelled and hard to eat. In the end I guess I don't "get" fancy Viet food and would go to Anh Hong or some dirty pho place instead.”

4/10/2007 11:51:19 AM