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Pros
- Conveniently located in a central part of the city
- Menu represents the most popular dishes of the Vietnamese kitchen, from báhn mì to ph?
- Fun decor that evokes a casual eatery in Vietnam
Cons
- Spacious as it is, this trendy restaurant fills up quickly; without reservations, we were lucky to score the last seats at a communal table
- Service can be inattentive and absent-minded - perhaps due to the full house
- Pricier than better-quality Vietnamese restaurants in the Netherlands' major cities
Description
- Address: Rabbijn Maarssenplein 21
2512 HJ The Hague
Phone: +31 (0)70 392 1230 - Location: The Hague Center
- Directions: Little V is just a 10-minute walk from The Hague Central Station (CS). Exit the station from the side that faces onto Turfmarkt. Follow Turfmarkt some 500 meters until you reach Spuiplein; turn left onto Spui, then right onto Sint Jacobstraat. Rabbijn Maarssenplein is a square that traces last stretch of the street, before Wagenstraat. Alternatively, take tram 2, 3, 4 or 6 to the Spui stop; continue southwest down Grote Marktstraat, then turn right onto Voldersgracht, which becomes Bezemstraat before it leads to Rabbijn Maarssenplein.
- Decor: Decked out like a Vietnamese theme restaurant, with touches of Southeast Asia - from exotic fruit crates to rice sacks - at every corner.
- Payment: Cash, credit and (Dutch) debit cards accepted.
Guide Review - Little V - The Hague Restaurant Review
The appeal of Little V is clear to see: the atmosphere is fun and trendy, and the food is at once exotic and accessible. By all accounts, it's a likable spot, for anyone in search of a more-or-less Vietnamese meal - "less" in that that's substantially modified for European tastes. As one of only two Vietnamese eateries in the city, it has a far cooler atmosphere than its competitor Ngon (at Dagelijkse Groenmarkt 31), but where it excels in accessibility, it lacks in credible Vietnamese taste.
I arrived on a mission: to see how they made one of my favorite comfort dishes, bún ch? giò: a deep bowl of rice vermicelli noodles (bún in Vietnamese), vibrant with fresh herbs and shredded carrot and radish, studded with ch? giò (Vietnamese spring roll), and doused in nu?c ch?m, a condiment that marries tart lime juice with savory fish sauce - a simple dish that cost almost double what it does at, say, Little Saigon on Amsterdam's Zeedijk. I was pleased to find other hard-to-find favorites on the menu, from bún riêu cua, a popular crab soup, in addition to standbys like ph? and báhn mì. I was a bit disappointed that the restaurant menu dispensed with all of the little diacritics - those strokes and dashes on and around letters - used to spell Vietnamese correctly; while that's par for the course in Western restaurants, it can betray a lack of attention to detail.
Inattention to detail was in fact a theme of our experience at Little V. When the bún ch? giò arrived, it was clear that several liberties had been taken with the classic recipe in order to come closer to a pan-Asian stir-fry dish, while the special sauce, the nu?c ch?m, was more soy sauce, less (perhaps no) fish sauce, a balance I tried feebly to correct once I was finally able to catch a waiter's attention. While the dish wasn't bad, it was scarcely better than one of the many anonymous wok restaurants that dot Dutch cities. A similar lacuna occurred when I ordered an after-dinner cà phê dá, Vietnamese iced coffee, delectably rich with sweetened condensed milk; when it arrived, there was the typical phin, a Vietnamese coffee filter, set to drip above a small coffee cup beside a taller one with ice, and ... no milk to be found. I repeated the process to try to correct the omission; fortunately the coffee wasn't meant to be hot, because it was surely lukewarm by the time I succeeded.
That's not to say that visitors won't enjoy Little V, especially if the service is better at less crowded times. As we sat at the restaurant's communal table, the only spot left for my reservation-less party, we were able to survey the reactions of the other diners: two Dutch women beside us seemed pleasantly surprised by their first encounter with Vietnamese food, while two worldly Londoners opposite us compared it unfavorably to their experiences elsewhere. Past exposure to Vietnamese food is definitely a factor: Little V probably won't be up to par for those who have been able to try excellent Vietnamese food in the past, and while I'm curious to try some of their other dishes, I would sooner return to nearby Ngon for my bún ch? giò fix. But persnickety Vietnamese food lovers like myself certainly haven't hindered Little V's popularity, which was still filled to capacity by the time we paid and left.
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