Caravelle Restaurant

Food was plentiful and hot when served. It is my pet peeve when food is served cold. For that alone they get 5 stars. Tasty garlic pork, plenty of vegetables. Nice atmosphere. Quiet. Great place to eat. Thanks, Unilocalers!

Don’t come here if you have a limited amount of time for lunch. They post opening time of 11:30 AM but the door is rarely unlocked at that time. Doesn’t matter though because once you’re in, the buffet isn’t ready or fully stocked anyways. They should just make a sign that says buffet starts at noon. The food is decent, so they get 2 stars instead of 1. Eggrolls are pretty good and flakey because they’re not the standard frozen Chinese ones.
Very nice owners but don’t come with high expectations.

I’ve been to many restaurants for phở, and I have yet to find one that beats the phở at Caravelle. It comes in large portions so it’s guaranteed to fill you up. The service is great — family owned. This place is a hidden gem.

Easily one of my favorite restaurants around and defiantly my favorite place to get phở. The phở comes out incredibly hot and you are given a generous portion. The broth tastes very good and honestly outperforms its competition within the twin cities area although you wouldn’t expect it. Clearly a family run organization with a friendly staff who have great relationships with many customers. Of you are not as into phở as myself their chicken is very crispy and fresh (all white meat) their egg foo young is very good, and their bun is delicious. Customers are very loyal for a good reason

We ordered our usual Sesame Chicken, fried rice, and hot oil. (1 order for 2 people… they stack it deep.)
Absolutely delicious. The batter used in the deep frying turned out crisp, but with depth that complimented the tender chicken which lies beneath. I ate way too much.
Good job!

Let me start out by saying I’m Vietnamese and I don’t like phở. However, the phở that I got here blew me away! It was one of the best phở’s I’ve ever had. The broth was very flavorful and there was plenty of meat. My waitress, Mary, was incredibly cheerful and helpful. It’s a hidden gem in St. Paul.

I got attacked by the flu! Body aches, headaches, stuffy nose and sore throat.
Unfortunately my momma is no longer with me.. neither is grandma.. But I have an American boyfriend who cared.. He did a search and found this Vietnamese restaurant.
He stated the Vietnamese lady was very kind and patient. He also stated she was very respectful and handed him change back with own palms.
So… great customer service goes a long way in my book.
The food is a-​ok. The broth was cloudy but i can tell there was alot of effort put into the body of the broth.. It was sweeter than i liked but over all not bad.
Siricha burns your throat when is already sore! Revelations to those of you who are addicted to spicy food like myself.. I felt better after the phở.
My congestion went down.. My nose was no longer stuffy. .
It twas a success. .!

Took others advice and ordered off the menu. I had the Kung Pao Chicken plate with a spiciness of 4 out of 5. Great dish!!! Really good flavor and huge portion sizes. 4 was not spicy at all and I could have easily ordered the 5 spicy level. The fried rice was fairly bland and lacking good flavor for what I am used to but the dish made up for it. Egg rolls were good. The greatest thing about this restaurant is the service… a friend of mine was only here once or twice and they remembered all his requests from previous visits… water no ice etc. Good meal for the price… would definitely go back.

This is one of our favorite spots for phở. What you get for the cost is great, the food is always delicious, and it is wonderful to go somewhere that the staff actually remember you. So glad to support a family-​run restaurant in town! I’m a big fan of the beef phở, my wife gets the chicken, and our toddler has now been introduced to the meatball phở with great success (which is awesome because our tiny human is a somewhat picky eater.)
This is the perfect spot to grab phở on a cold MN day!

Best food in town I have been going here now for about a year this is the best Chinese food that I have found in Minnesota the owners are nice and they treat you like they are your only customer

I’ve been eating here for thirteen years. It’s a small family restaurant, so they can get overwhelmed when busy, but their vermicelli bowls and lo mein dishes are terrific. Good prices and good portions of very tasty Vietnamese food. My favorite restaurant. Oh, and lest I forget their Phở is tremendous as well!

Caravelle delivers again and again. I have come to expect good, hot, fresh food. I have and always will recommend this place.

We usually go here because it’s the only half way decent take out in the area. I’m used to their 45 min wait for takeout but tonight I sent my husband to pick it up and they gave our food to someone else!!! They said they would go make some more after they tried calling the person who took it. (I’m sorry but I’m not going to eat the food that someone else took) yuck. Anyway. I told my husband to ask if they were going to discount us on anyway seeing the fact we have hungry kids waiting for dinner after swimming lessons. And they said no and that we’re going to have to pay full price. I told my husband to leave and I’d just make dinner. Because at this point we needed to feed the family. I was so excited for our cheesey anniversary dinner at home but ended up with Italian! Haha. Needless to say after that experience were not going back!

This is by far the worst Asian restaurant I have ever eaten at it is very unclean by the visual site as soon as you walk in the service is bad the waitress can barely speak English although the menu is only written in English. The food was very bland and came out very very fast almost as though it was already done before I got there. The chicken was very fluffy and spongy did not have the texture of chicken nor did it taste like chicken it was also a very very light white color and it had the consistency and texture of eggs. Very disgusting would not recommend it to my worst enemy!

My go-​to when I don’t feel like driving to University Ave for Asian food. It is usually never packed, but I see many people with to-​go orders. They are fairly quick and they offer good prices. While nothing out of the ordinary, I feel their dish variety is better than most Asian places and the items don’t all taste like the next menu item.
I thought their meat was tender and not overbearing in taste, which stands out from other places which tend to be rubbery or bland.

Caravelle is s’alright. If I could give it a 3.5 I would. I ordered the sesame chicken combo, which came with an eggroll and fried rice (my choice) and also an order of the pork spring rolls — all for around 14 bucks.
The portion sizes here a HUGE. Like damn! I left wishing I had just ordered one item or the other. The spring rolls are ginormous and a meal in themselves. My only real complaint about them was that there was too little meat and too much lettuce. Otherwise, very fresh and tasty with the dipping sauces that came with.
They offered me a choice of spice on a 1 – 5 scale for the sesame chicken. I played it safe and went with a 3 and upon my first bite was wishing I had opted for a 5 as it wasn’t spicy at all. Maybe if you are the kind of person who think ketchup is spicy…
The sesame chicken was alright, nothing to get too excited about other than there was easily enough of it for 2 – 3 meals. I actually really enjoyed the fried rice — they didn’t skimp on the egg (love me some fried rice loaded with egg). Also enjoyed the egg roll; thin and crispy with tasty pork filling and a tad bit greasy — yum.
I would definitely come back and order from here again, if for no other reason than to snag an order of the egg rolls and fried rice. It’s better than a lot of the other options nearby in terms of price, quality and quantity.

Friendly staff, moderate prices and plentiful portions add points to this review.
A good choice for neighborhood Chinese but why don’t they deliver?

Caravelle isn’t setting any new trends, but after moving out of the area to downtown St. Paul I’m starting to realize that good and reasonably priced restaurants like this are becoming somewhat rare.
Their egg rolls are always crisp and fresh, the pork dumplings are really yummy, and the entrees consistently deliver as expected. Think of mom’s meatloaf– solid and tasty, but never gonna be on Manny’s menu and that’s OK– you’re craving it and you KNOW it. Is Caravelle a destination-​worthy spot? Nah. But if you live nearby, you’re in luck. The staff has always been super nice, too.

I was excited to give Caravelle a try, since the northern suburbs are a bit of a good food desert. A decent Vietnamese place would be really nice. I did not find it lived up to my expectations.
I was there with a friend at lunch and he decided on the phở (after having to ask after it – it isn’t on the regular menu). I’d have tried the phở too, but the only options were beef (round steak), chicken, and meatball. If you can’t get tripe or fatty brisket or tendon, why bother? This turned out to be good thinking… I decided to try the buffet, figuring that it would establish a floor for quality beneath which things would never descend.
The buffet was uninspired but edible. The staff didn’t monitor it carefully, so even though it was noon, they ran out of pretty much everything except the neon-​yellow «lemon chicken.» That was okay – I didn’t need another helping.
The real surprise was the phở. My friend started by saying, «this is better than the Pink Flower’s,» damning with faint praise. He kept eating for a while and said, «this has some kind of taste or smell I don’t like.» Finally he remarked, «I know what it is – this reminds me of the way my dog’s food smells.» Huh. Score one for passing on the phở.
I stand by my recommendation of Phở Ca Dao as my go-​to phở place in town. I’d rather trek there once a month than have off-​flavor phở every week.

Maybe you have a PHObia of trying something new, but don’t make the PHO-​pas of passing up this place. Their Vietnamese noodle soup is PHOnominal. Definitely not PHOny at all. This grub is no PHOdder. This is the best PHOreign food I’ve ever had. I wanted to PHOne my mother and tell her how good it was. I took a picture of it and it was PHOtogenic. It was so much food, they took it to our table in a PHOrklift. I’d like to PHOrnicate with it, but that would probably be PHOrbiddin.
I can’t think of any more puns because my tummy is way too PHO.