I spent a fair bit of time in here on my last visit a year ago, because it was a convenient location for me, and the beer was quite reasonably priced on 'happy hour' - and I got to like one of the bar staff...they had then.
Also, the one plus point I would give this place, they do an extremely good pho for only about 40k dong - which is a very reasonable price for anywhere these days, let alone a 'Western' bar.
However, I had a lot of problems there too - noticed that most of the staff didn't speak much if any English, and didn't have a clue about customer service.
After a year away, I had hoped that things might have improved. But no. Tried looking in a couple of times in the afternoon (in warm weather, I prefer to drink during daylight - and then go home early); but they seem only to have a 'skeleton' staff on during the day; and the 'front of house' guy barely spoke English, and really didn't have a clue about anything. In fact, he was lying on a sofa half-asleep when I arrived, and, on rousing himself, was plainly terrified at the prospect of having to try to deal with a foreign customer. I don't blame him at all; staff this poorly equipped shouldn't be given this kind of responsibilty, shouldn't be left to look after things on their own.
Things were scarcely any better when I dropped by early evening. Now they had five or six staff on duty; but few of them seemed to speak much English. And their idea of 'greeting' a new customer was to form a human cordon across the entrance, effectively denying me access.
While there was an unhealthy competition to try to take an order from me, there was apparently only one member of staff who was considered competent to pour the draft beer. This meant that, although there was only one other table of customers in the place at the time, because they'd just arrived and all placed beer orders, I was probably looking at a 5-minute wait before I could get anything - while there were five or six staff stood around DOING NOTHING.
For some reason, service standards in Hanoi generally seem to be pretty terrible (Saigon is such a different world!); but this place really takes the cake.
It would be one of the better places to drink in this part of Hanoi (not high praise, but...) - if you could actually get served.More