the wok asian restaurant

do you like salt?. i decided to try this restaurant out one sunday due to the fact that my favorite vietnamese restaurant was closed. i ordered three vermicellinoodledishes for my family, as well as an extra order of vietnamese rolls and cold/salad rolls.

the meals themselves were alright, nothing really special but nothing really wrong with them either. the vietnamese rolls were different than most other places i have tried, but once again they were just ok and nothing special. the cold/salad rolls were not good at all.

the rice paper that the cold/salad rolls were wrapped in were tough. it was like they had either not been hydrated enough before they were used or they were dehydrated after having been wrapped.

the peanut sauce that was given to dip the cold/salad rolls in was really nothing more than soya sauce with some crushed peanuts mixed in. this was by far the worst peanut sauce i have ever had. similarly the fish sauce that waa given to use for the vermicelli and the vietnamese rolls was very high in salt content. in addition to that the flavor was unlike any fish sauce i have ever had before.

i am at this point recommending that if you like vietnamese dishes, like the ones i have described, you do not attempt them at this restaurant. i can not speak to other dishes they have, some of the cuisine may be very good. if on the other hand you are in favor of overloading on your salt content in one meal, look no further.

re found this place after a few years and am i ever glad i did. i have only had the spicy tai soup and paid 2.00 more to add veggies.

so good in fact this is the second time i have eaten here this week.

very strong flavour based soup. fast service

very clean place. worth a try if you want some spicynoodlesoup.


i meant to take a picture but i was so excited to eat it that i forgot to......

i really enjoy coming here with my girlfriends for dinner and having the satay  beefnoodlesoup, and their viet coffee, sometimes the service isn't as well as i thought it would be but the food is good. not a fan of their seafood though, usually taste very rubbery and not pleasant to chew, so i refrain from ordering anything with seafood in it. i do love their candy selection though :)

both the food and customer service are very disappointing. i had a satay beefnoodlesoup with medium spicy(which is not spicy at all) take out and i recognized that they gave me a wrong order ( because i order this all the time!) so i called, but the old lady there insisted "if the soup base is brown, that is the satay beefnoodlesoup! and you only ordered medium spicy" "but this is black! " i said " and i have had this before .........(i kept on explaining)" ....then she hang up on me...i ordered medium spicy!not no spicy! i am really disappointed and i swear i am never going back again!!!!!

spicy beef and porknoodlesoup (#21). broth was nice, but they used spaghetti noodles instead of rice noodle. kinda weird

still don't understand what the craze is about..... what's with the hype with thenoodlesoups?!?! it's loaded to the nines with msg!!!!! the pho doesn't taste like pho, the chinese food tastes like buffet quality, and the pan fried dumplings are basically deep fried wontons, c'mon! would have to be brainwashed to believe that this place is great.

bestnoodlebowls. my office always ordersnoodlebowls from here. they are always tasty and filling with appealing presentation. price is right too.

we had a wonderful supper here tonight.. incredible spring rolls that were served hot and crispy! we both had #22 spicy thainoodlesoup which was excellent, it tasted bright and tangy - love the cilantro and bean sprouts with a squeeze of lemon.. the service was great and we will certainly return again soon!

been eating here for the last 4 to 5 years. food is always good and very good value for what you get. beefnoodlesoup and satay beef on rice is all i eat. with high rents on 8th street and food cost raising so fast. the owner still manage to keep prices good for us. some times the service is slow because they were busy but understandable.


-----31 dec, 2012-----

to "horrible customer service"
if they charge you $10 for delivery charge you must live on the opposite side of the city. keep in mind that the driver gets the $10. not the restaurant. i am pretty sure there are more than 10 restaurants which sell similar food between where you live and this restaurant. a simple mistake and you got you money back for the dish. can't complain. if you insist the restaurant to spend $10 to delivery your noodles which is worth $1. and not take any alternatives were offered to you. they only see you as a customer who wanted to cash in on their mistake. i am sure no managers will let that happen. they have a really thin profit margin aprox 5% to 10%. next time just take the alternative offers and everyone will be happy. or just order from your neighbourhood restaurant so you can pick it up or they can deliver for $5. and still make money.

favorite vietnamese. in my opinion, this restaurant has the best vietnamese soups in the city. my husband goes crazy for the bun bo hue (spicy pork and beef ricenoodlesoup.) i usually get the spicy shrimp ricenoodlesoup. when you ask for hot, they make it hot. sometimes vietnamese restaurants dont think you can handle the spice or something, and make their soups mild to medium anyways when you ask for hot; not the wok. they also have phenomenal salad rolls.

not the greatest.. have been here twice in the last month. the first time both of us got normalnoodlebowls, which were quite tasty, though my iced coffee was not nearly strong enough. the girl serving us was nice and fairly fast service.
the second time our spring rolls tasted good, although not my favorite in town. my chicken in my curry tasted spoiled, and there was a big chunk of moldy onion on my plate. my partner thought his chicken sate was bland. service this time was very slow even though the place was far from busy.
might try it again sometime, but its not high on the list to come back too.

will be back. tried somenoodlebowls here and they were great. will definitely be coming back to try some other menu items!

better than last time. came again and this time the speed was much quicker and the food quality was still quite high. getting a seat is difficult especially considering how understaffed they are. service also takes a negative hit because of this.

but the food is still very well done.


-----24 jul, 2012-----

overall experience was very poor. it's been a while since my last review, but tonight's experience has woken a sleeping bear.

the wok is severely understaffed, with the same two servers working all the tables as well as the till. the line up to be seated was not a result of a full dining room, but because of a combination of many tables with dirty dishes yet to be cleared and a till busy with people trying to pay.

i timed the whole experience.

it took 6 minutes to get seated at one of the many empty tables. i ordered the vermicelli bowl that came with beef, two springs rolls, and "jumbo shrimp" (back on this later).

it took 29 complete minutes before i got my food. being alone, there was only so much conversation i could hold with the bottle of sriracha hot sauce before i started going 'non compos mentis'. when an older lady (owner?) asked if i'd ordered and i replied with "i ordered a half hour ago", hell did break loose in the kitchen. not once during this entire 29-minute-ordeal did someone come to fill my glass of water nor see how my conversation with the hot sauce was going.

the actual bowl of noodles tasted good, although i was disappointed that when the menu said "jumbo shrimp", they literally meant "a single shrimp laying alone on top of your noodles". the extra $2 for this seafood extravaganza was not worth it and i suggest ordering any one of the other, cheaper bowls that come without that extra solitary shrimp.

this experience may have been an anomaly, but it was bad enough that i had to write about it. full groups of 6 even came after me, ordered and received their full orders before i had a sniff of mine. compared to my past experiences at the wok, i've never had service so terrible and ignorant.

ps - did you know that a teaspoon of sriracha sauce has 5 calories and is all naturally coloured? believe me, i'd know.


-----28 nov, 2010-----

will come more often. a group of us (8) came here today (sunday) for lunch with the hopes of having some good vietnamese food. upon walking into the wok asian restaurant, my first impression was how small the dining area was. at most, the restaurant could probably hold around 50 people, so our one group took up a good portion of the dining space. the decor was clean, tasteful, and well put together.

our drink orders arrived first. most of us ordered the three bean drink, which is a cold, light-green concoction, with a mixture of some beans and a jelly-like substance at the bottom. at first, i thought this was some sort of witty joke by the chefs, as today is, after all, grey cup sunday. but alas, upon further investigation, my friend informed me that even though the green hue is normal, it's normally not that noticeable. it's a drink that is quite sweet, making me wish i ordered it as a dessert item. one peeve that i had was the excess ice, which made it difficult to spoon out the beans without getting chunks of ice in your mouth (i ended up transferring all of the ice into my water cup). secondly, the straw was too thin, making it difficult to sip the drink without having red beans clogging the straw. besides these things, the drink was pretty good.

actual food began arriving roughly 15 minutes after ordering. first thing down my ever-expanding gullet was the spicy beef and porknoodlesoup (#21). being a spin-off of the traditional pho, i enjoyed this quite a bit. being a spicy fan, the noodles and perfect amount of meat complimented each other. the bbq pork chow mein (#61) was also quite good, albeit slightly oily. besides the fact that the noodles glistened in the sunshine and the bbq pork a tad dry, it tasted good enough for me to ignore these minor inconveniences.

round two: stomach is still wanting more. so next i tried the curried bean curd and vegetables (#39), which is simply stir-fried vegetables with cubes of bean curds. personally, i found all of the vegetables ever-so-slightly undercooked, but everybody else seemed to like it. the curry complimented the beef fried rice (#68) very nicely. eating the curry alone with a spoon would prove too powerful of a taste, but when mixed with the run-of-the-mill fried rice, it all balanced out.

almost everyone's favorite dish was the beef ricenoodlesoup (#16), which is pretty much what every other restaurant would call "pho" (pronounced "phuh", as i learned today). the noodles were cooked perfectly and not chopped up, the cooks didn't skimp out on the beef, and the portion was huge. we were happy with this choice. is it the best 'pho' in town? not quite, but it's pretty close!

my least favorite dish was the seafood hot pot (#49). it wasn't the 'taste' of the seafood that i didn't like, but simply the difficulty in 'finding the seafood' amidst all of the vegetables. if i'm paying for something with the name "seafood hot pot", i expect a hot pot with mostly seafood inside. if i hadn't double-checked, then i would have thought they gave us "vegetable hot pot with-a-dash-of-seafood." until this is fixed, avoid it.

i'm split on the service. the young woman who initially was serving us (late teens, early 20s) seemed disconnected from the customers and was maybe mentally "somewhere else." now, i'm not the kind of guy who demands all 32 teeth to be gleaming when i'm being served, but even a little smile wouldn't hurt. also, i don't recall her every coming back to refill our water glasses. ever. on the other hand, the older lady (possibly owner) who gave us our food was extremely nice and hospitable.

during our whole dining experience, every other table was always filled, and people were always at the front door waiting for seats. obviously people know that there is good food here, and i don't blame them. for around $8 for a very full stomach, why would someone pass an opportunity like this? overall: the wok serves pretty good (not great) asian food for a fantastic price. i will come back.

favorite restaurant in town!. i eat here probably 5 times a week. thenoodlebowls are the bomb. all the girls there are sweet hearts especially the caucasian girl, she's hot! hotter than the rooster sauce..woop! woop!

meh-. ordered 'spicy beef and porknoodlesoup' and was not impressed. the noodles were too thick and too soft, there was too much broth. the location where we were seated was close to the door and was cold and drafty. every time patrons would come through the door we'd get blasted by cold air.

on a positive note: the spring-rolls were, however, delicious.