The first meal looks unappetizing and maybe these places are best just to order a starter and see if the food is decent or not or should I say meets expectations. There is nothing worse than having high hopes for a place and it turns out to be a shocker. The local Vietnamese food looks superb so I can understand why it is hard to justify the extra costs at some fancy place that is normally a disaster.
i've been let down by almost all of the foreign food here. There is one exception and that was a BBQ place that was run by an American from North Carolina and it was absolutely fantastic. he was a bit like the "soup Nazi" from Seinfeld in that if you stepped out of line or annoyed him in the ordering process he would ask you to leave.
His hours were 4pm until they ran out of food and if you went there past 6 or so, there was a good chance that you were not going to have many options.
Unfortunately, Covid got his shop and he decided to pack up and move to Mexico or something and now that void has not yet been filled.
That BBQ joint that closed down sounds like it could have been a winner if he had just ordered a little more food because the concept of being open till you run out is great as you know everything is fresh.
We used to visit a Greek restaurant that had a similar policy and only made about 50 portions of each special daily. The restaurant was small and only had two mains on the menu and one special and was basically booked out for 6 months in advance it was that good. I think the owner died or something along those lines because it moved premises and was never the same standard.