Veranda Noodle Bar Portland

My foodie friend took me here because it’s his favorite place to eat in the entire world. I’ve traveled quite a few places, and have had a extensive amount of great, good, and ok food on my palette...so he was interested to see what I thought. I ordered an appetizer of Shrimp Tempura and had the Grilled Chicken Vermicelli (my friend’s favorite). The shrimp was a plain battered fried shrimp with battered and fried vegetables like zucchini and sweet potato. I didn’t expect fried vegetables. I normally don’t like zucchini or sweet potato but they weren’t bad. It came with a sweet and little spicy sauce/dressing (which the Grilled Chicken Vermicelli also came with). The shrimp was good and decent sized, but I only got three and would have liked more. I think the price for it was around $9. As for the Grilled Chicken Vermicelli, my friend told me to ask for an extra serving of sweet/spicy sauce/dressing. It came in a nice large bowl and includes lots of vegetables. Noodles are at the bottom, so you need to pour in the dressing and stir it all in with the noodles. The flavor was pretty great, but I got some a few pretty large pieces of fat/cartilage in it, so I had to pick those out. All in all, pretty good...but if you want great Vietnamese food, go to Boba in Lewiston, Maine on Lisbon Street.