Is this “Vampiric Vietnamese”? Co Thành has just opened next to Covent Garden Market, claiming to be the legacy of The Lunch Lady, the Saigon street-food stall made globally famous by Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations (video embedded on their website).

Does this London restaurant, with its plastic chairs, probable rent of a quarter-million a year, and £20 bowls of bún bò Huế, really have anything to do with the original? The Lunch Lady herself, Nguyễn Thị Thành, sadly died earlier this year.

I had:

• BÚN BÒ HUẾ – beef noodle soup with various meats and pineapple (£19.75)
• MEM NƯƠNG – pork sausage skewers, peanuts, and nước chấm (£9)
• BÒ LÁ LỐT – beef rolled in betel leaf (£9.50)
• one cocktail

With service, £60 for one. A lighter meal would be about £28.

The soup lacked spice, heat, and depth, and came with packet noodles. The pineapple added an interesting twist (apparently authentic in some recipes), but for a dish that’s meant to be the Friday special of legend, it fell short. The starters were slightly better, the sausage had decent texture and the betel-leaf roll was pleasant, but both were underpowered in flavour.

Overall: fine, not terrible, but not worth the price. It trades on street-food imagery without delivering that. Staff were lovely and service professional, but Bami Viet in Twickenham served a far better meal for less than half the money.

One of the owners claims to be the only apprentice of the Lunch Lady, but the company is an international group with sites in Hong Kong. She had nothing to do with it, Bourdain never visited, and another restaurant in Toronto also claims her endorsement, except there they actually have photos of her on social media. This place doesn’t even do the original’s rotating soups.

So, a hard swerve from me. It’s not bad food, just a hollow brand story at London prices.

(Not an influencer, not comped, I pay for everything. I write free reviews on  Substack but haven’t written one for here yet.)