International Seafood Restaurant

They closed down!!! So disappointed! I’ve been coming here since I was a kid! I will never find garlic calamari better than this place… So sad :(

This place has downsized.
They walled off the banquet room and it is a lot smaller.
Also they don’t serve dim sum anymore and apparently haven’t in 5 years which says about how long I have been away from this place.
The interior is a lot cleaner with new furniture and tables. Lighter colors make it a nicer room and makes it feel bigger. Very comfortable environment now.
When I came in at about 2PM it was completely empty.
There was only one crab in the tanks and no lobsters.
I ordered the 8 treasures hot pot.
It was 9.99 and about what the typical hot pot goes for nowadays. It was good not great. The pork seemed a little old and slightly tough. The rest of the seafood was fish cakes sliced, fish, shrimp, squid, chicken, mushrooms, cabbage, etc. I don’t know what the 8^th thing was lol.
It was not overcooked and actually not bad at all.
Honestly I think this place is hurting for business big time.
Maybe they do ok on the weekends.
The problem may be that it doesn’t stand out among the plethora of asian restaurants in the area and the dishes are good but not great.
I may try the Ca Kho To next time to see if it is better than Saigon’s version.

Every time I’ve been here the service and food has been amazing. The staff is super friendly and attentive. The food takes no longer than 15 minutes depending on how busy they are but even if that, it’s well worth the wait. I love the walnut shrimp and friend chicken wings. It is on point every time and a must have. This is definitely my go to place when I’m craving Chinese and Vietnamese food. Couldn’t ask for more.

This is a perfect example of a place that has a menu too big.
Since they have sooooooo many options but don’t do a ton of volume, the quality is inconsistent. My lady friend usually gets the bun cuon tay ho, which is above average, but better some days than others. I’ve gotten the phở multiple times, which has ranged from way too salty to pretty good. The rice dishes are decent as well.
Its tough, because there may have been a day when International was poppin, but now its never crowded, and having to stock too much variety of food that doesn’t sell fast can’t be easy. I would rather go to a restaurant that has a few go-​to items instead of serving everything under the sun

This place is kinda weird (at least to me anyways). Viet and Chinese food? That seems kinda random. Yet, me and the BF got the best of both worlds and got a chow mein and a bowl of phở.
The chow mein was alright. Nothing exciting or special. The phở was realllly salty. I just kept complaining about how salty it was but I would never not finish a bowl of phở. If there was less sat, it’d probably be good.
Overall, I don’t know how I feel about combining both Viet and Chinese food together in the same resturant. I think I can find both foods better at other places so I probably wouldn’t come back.

I used to love going here with my family whenever we were in the area and craving Asian food.
For those of you who have noticed that it’s smaller, yeah, they got rid of the «other» side of their restaurant for weddings and other occasions. Guess it wasn’t profitable to have it open (I never have seen it used for anything after all).
Food-​wise, there are some go-​to dishes for us, including the fried stuffed tofu, the garlic fried shrimp. We also order some other dishes, ranging from fish to items with broth/​soup, to vegetable dishes, to the cubed beef dish depending on our mood. Oh, and I love that they give you a dessert for free!
Why I didn’t give this place 4 stars is the service. It used to be a lot better. Recently, they would forget dishes or bring out dishes that we didn’t order. If we asked for an extra bowl, they would forget. The rice wasn’t also cooked all the way this last time we went :/​
Overall, the food is still good (though it used to be slightly better). The service has gone down a lot. But I would still come back for the main authentic food dishes.

Service is horrible. Took a long time to sit down because waitresses busy cleaning up talbes. We sit for a long time and noone came take order because waitresses busy cleaning up tables. They must be busy that weekend but not a good excuse to make us wait while they cleaning up table. Bad management. We walked out (first time ever) and noone even came to ask when we were walking out. Great way to push customers away. Won’t be back here ever. This rating is purely on their customer service.

Our family went here after the Vietnamese Easter mass yesterday to celebrate my cousin’s son’s Confirmation. The food is okay. They are know for their banh cuon and family style meals. We had lobster and it was yummy. The canh chua is pretty good too. I was still hungry afterwards though… haha. They also give you complimentary dessert, but I don’t like that stuff. :P

Is it me or did this place get smaller? It’s been awhile since I’ve been here because before. there was a fairly large banquet room next to the small dining area… Anywho, my family and I decided to have dinner here because my parents wanted something different than our usual Lee’s Garden. Well. unfortunately, they were disappointed. My mom had told me that she heard this place was good from other people but it wasn’t. We prefer the Quoc Te in City Heights.
The food was okay and I notice that the quantity of the food wasn’t as much as we anticipated… or what we were used to. Oh well! We had a pleasant experience overall. The staff were very kind and friendly.

This place has always been here and has always been fourth or fifth choice down the list for me,
It’s not that they have bad service or horrible food, it’s just that there are better choices around.
But after 9:00PM on a weekday, if you want Phở or something similar this is one of your only options.
Coupled with decent service and pretty decent food, it really isn’t a bad place to eat at.
Most of the time it’s pretty dead inside though and if you don’t mind them playing «wedding» style music, it’s an enjoyable experience.

Phuong Trang down the street explains this restaurant’s emptiness. Bf wanted to come here for a specialty rice noodle dish that he couldn’t find anywhere, and it didn’t disappoint. In fact, it was pretty darn good. However, everything else is just disappointing.
They should be ashamed of the spring rolls they serve. (Try the one at phuong trang and your life will be changed forever.) The soup noodles leave weird aftertaste. Anyways, no surprise it’s always empty.

I stepped into this place on a cold and stormy Sunday night. I referred to Unilocal for a place because being in the Kearny Mesa area, there aren’t too many places that come to mind that are open past 10pm on a Sunday. It was 930pm and I know I could still make it to a bunch of places before their kitchens closed, but I just hate being that guy who walks into a place and everyone has to wait for me. I understand I pay for the service, but selfishness is a bit rampant these days… so when I called this place, they told me they were planning to close the kitchen at 1045. Perfect!
I ended up being the only table here, but that didn’t bother me… it was pouring rain outside and I got some awesome service. There were quite a few take-​out orders that came and went during the course of my meal.
I ordered their beef and flank phở, and also their spicy garlic/​pepper shrimp (deep fried) with a side of rice. The phở itself was good, nothing awesome about it, definitely detracted a bit from the standard Vietnamese broth to something with a bit of Chinese influence, which makes sense, because the staff members were speaking in Chinese. But on a rainy night, the broth was well made and tasted good.
The shrimp was just as good. Like anything else deep fried, it’s pretty hard to mess up something where the temperature of the oil remains constant, and all you have to do is mind the timing. But it was a generous portion for $ 9.95. I loved the chili that they use with it.
Overall the place looks like it’s past it’s hay day. The décor is pretty dated and so is the staff and menus. But this is the exact type of place that someone such as myself looks for for asian comfort food for a reasonable price and a no-​nonsense staff.
Seemed like a good place to take larger families with children, since most things are served family style (which is better for your soul anyway).

I come here quite frequently. Probably once every 2 weeks for their family special. Service is excellent as always and the food is on point, just don’t go too late because the food will be rushed and not prepared correctly.

The Saturday I went it was very quiet. There were two other groups eating there. One of those groups appeared to be relatives or good friends of the workers. Felt a bit uncomfortable to have the place so empty.
The food was disappointing. The honey cashew shrimp was mediocre. The sauce didn’t quite how I like it. The orange chicken didn’t taste like orange chicken — perhaps more like sweet and sour?
Service was pretty good. Worker was polite and friendly.
This place has a lot of memories for me – which is why I gave it *** and instead of **. A lot of wedding celebration banquets have been held here.

I came here with my friends on a Saturday. There weren’t many people in the restaurants, just couples and one big family. Because I was craving phở, we decided not to order «family» style.
I order the XL phở which was surprisingly delicious. However, the eggsprouts looked quite old and they didn’t give as much as other restaurants. The soup was also quite oily which made me wonder if the phở soup was fresh or not. However, the large portion and the authentic taste made up for any doubts. In all honesty, it tasted real, not like the msg crap they serve at other restaurants.
I don’t think phở here is necessarily their «forte», however, it does taste really homey. :)

Save Quoc Te (aka International)! I’m scared that this place will be out of business soon. I remember when they used to have a huge space for dim sum and weddings and now its reduced to just the smaller room. I’m sad for them since its hard to keep up with the competition in this predominantly Korean dining community.
While the food is pretty damn good for the price. We’ve been coming here for dinner where you can choose from nearly 20 items (family style). A 4-​item dinner is $ 25 and served 2 – 4 ppl. Or you can opt for more with the 7-​item dinner which is $ 40. You really can’t beat this deal. It would cost me more to cook all these items at home but just know that this deal is for dine-​in dinner guests only from Mon-​Thurs.
My personal faves: Sweet & Sour Vietnamese soup, salted shrimp, calamari, crispy chicken, Chinese broccoli and beef and their dessert– Che Ba Mau (sp)– its a sweet red bean dessert.
You will notice that the restaurant is struggling with the out-​dated décor, lack of staffing and on our last trip the AC was out but give them a chance. I would be sad to see them close their doors.

I went here recently with some friends. To be honest, if you go to a restaurant like this, I prefer getting a family style meal.
Fortunately, the other people in our party had the same sentiment, so we got one of those standard Vietnamese seafood meals, consisting of oysters, catfish, shrimp, and… I think it’s called tamarind soup (I only know the soup by its Vietnamese name, canh chua.)? We also got tofu and some meaty looking dish.
Oysters: Hit or miss in terms of meat. And the sauce was too overbearing and salty to me.
Catfish: It was decent. Not too salty, not too lacking on the sauce.
Fried shrimp: Pedestrian.
Canh chua: Not sour enough. Soup was a little on the lukewarm side. I prefer my soups to be piping hot.
Tofu: Too much ginger. It might not be bad for most, but I hate ginger pieces in anything.
Overall, the restaurant is average. I may come here once in a while, definitely not an every day place to eat.

This is for Quoc Te, and it’s really really good authentic phở! The serving portions are super big and never fails to amaze me how much they give you and how full you get. I usually never finish mine cause of how much they give you!
During dinner time, they usually give you a little dessert soup thing afterwards and it’s super tasty! I just thought it was a really nice little addition to just give your customers this.
I go there so much that I recognize the workers haha. Sometimes though the service can be kind of slow depending on who you get, but overall it’s really good :)

Alot of people come to this restaurant for some reason. I guess you should buy the dishes instead of the noodles. I had wonton noodle soup and it was pretty bad compared to usual wonton noodles I’ve had. My friend had a phở noodle soup and he said he has also had better. If I were you I would suggest buying the dishes because everyone seemed to be buying those. Best of luck with choosing your dishes!

I had the absolutely worst dining experience of my life here, and this isn’t even about the food.
My boyfriend and I came here during lunch time on a Sunday, and it was pretty slow. When we got there, they were only serving two other tables. We were beckoned to sit at a table in between these two. 5 minutes later, we were given menus. And then another 5 minutes later, the waitress came to our table and asked us what our orders were. Pretty standard, right?
Within 5 to 10 minutes after we were seated, three more tables were seated near us. We watched as the waitress took their orders immediately, gave them complementary water, and quickly gave them any drinks they ordered. I ordered a 7-​Up, only to receive it 15 minutes later. Even the table of two that arrived after us got their blended drinks long before I did.
And then we saw every single table that was seated AFTER us receive all of their entrees before we received any of our dishes. One table of four had five entrees arrive at their table. Another table of two had 3 entrees arrive at theirs. We were there for about a total of 45 minutes before I decided to just get up and leave.
My boyfriend was shocked because he had been there a few times before and the service was great. I asked, «Did you go with Vietnamese Americans those times?» He did. They spoke to all of the other tables they were serving in Vietnamese. Now I wonder, how accommodating is this place to non-​Vietnamese/​Americans? Or people who do not identify as East Asian/​American or Southeast Asian/​American?
Because as a Pinay (and my boyfriend, as a Pacific Islander) did not feel welcome here at all. I’ve never left a restaurant feeling so hurt and excluded. I thought this kind of thing only happened at extremely bourgy, ritzy places, but I guess I was naïve in thinking so.

This was one of my favorite places to come to during my high school days with all my friends.
We would also order a bunch of dishes as they were large enough to fill all of us up. I recommend the veggie plates and also any of the seafood plates. You won’t be disappointed. Make sure to ask for rice refills as you will need plenty of it to down the food ;)
They have a mixture of Chinese/​Vietnamese food here so you’ll find something you can enjoy on the menu.
During the morning to afternoon time, you can also get dim-​sum as they open up the other half of the restaurant. I don’t recommend the dim-​sum here though. From my experience, it tasted not so great!