Vietnam Kitchen

The 1Utama Shopping Complex must be the most popular shopping haunt for PJ folks. It is the 4th largest mall in the world and apparently plays a big part in Kuala Lumpur making into CNN's list of world's 12 best shopping cities. Shopping is definitely not one of my pastimes. Food is. And indeed the 1Utama is a food haven of sort. There are restaurants and eateries all over the complex - in the new wing, old wing and on every floor. I have featured a number of restaurants in this place. The Vietnam Kitchen is yet another.

We had passed his restaurant many times but we had not bothered to go in. On this occasion, it was also a pass-by. Somehow the Vietnamese bug bit my wife as we did, and we made an adhoc decision to go in.

I did not have high expectations of the place as we walked in, in spite of its apparent popularity and its nice cool decor. Perhaps my mind was not programmed for Vietnamese at the time.

The menu was like a colourful newspaper. It even had a headline. And the dishes were all colourfully displayed.

We made our selection and had a pot of Vietnamese tea while waiting for our food.

The starter was the house platter. It was a big combo plate of pork, beef, prawn rolls, meat wrapped in sugar cane - the usual Vietnamese stuffs. The meats were deep fried in a marinade with lots of crunched peanuts. They were served with various salads and raw greens and a small portion of plain white mee-hoon. There were 2 types of sauces.

The rice paper was served separately with a bowl of water. The rice paper quickly turned soft when wet and became a kind of translucent popiah skin. We wrapped the meats and the vegetables with the sauces. The final product was delicious.

The mango duck was excellent. It was roast duck in a mango sauce. The meat was tender with a bit of fat. The flavour was superb. If you are ever in the Vietnam Kitchen, I recommend this as a must.

This was a sinful pork trotter, stewed with a chilli peanut sauce in a hot clay pot. The spicy chilli and peanut was a good combination for the pork trotter. The meat was tender. There considerable amount of sinful fat to make the dish more delicious. The duck and the trotters were totally worth our while in Vietnam Kitchen.

Finally, we had this vege dish. It was stir fried lotus root. The root was sliced thin and it was crunchy and very pleasing to the mouth.

My wife's sudden craze for Vietnamese paid off. The meal was very enjoyable. I saw a number of people having the beef noodles (Pho). I wondered aloud if it was good. My wife said we had tried it before and it wasn't great. Really? I thought this was my first experience in Vietnam Kitchen.

A Vietnamese meal in Bankstown

We did end up at a Vietnamese restaurant. Somehow I always do whenever I am in Australia. A lot of times, I go for the pho bo - the Vietnamese beef noodles. This time, Sam brought us to this shop for the goi cuon - the Vietnamese rice paper rolls.

The place he took us was Bun Bo Hue Gia Hoi, located on Chapel Road South in the Sydney suburb of Bankstown. It is about 15 minutes from Sam's place. Bankstown has a sizeable Asian population and a number of Vietnamese and Chinese eateries. Bun Bo Hue Gia Hoi is one of the smaller ones. It was brightly lit and appeared to be popular with the local folks.

Bun Bo Hue is the spicy Vietnamese beef noodle. And Gia Hoi must be the name of the shop. Since they put the 2 together, I guess this shop specialises in this spicy noodle. As we walked into the shop, I did noticed a number of people having it. Unfortunately none of us opted for it.

Sam ordered a large portion of goi cuon (Vietnamese rice paper rolls) for the 7 hungry stomachs. The ingredients for the rolls came in a large plate. There were a variety of meats - beef, chicken, fish cake, and I think there was pork as well. Some were weirdly red. There were also various vegetables - taugeh (bean sprouts), fresh basel, lettuce, carrot strips, mint leaves, etc. And generous portions of soft rice vermicelli or 'bun' in Vietnamese. And these were served with various types of sauces.

An unlimited amount of stiff rice papers were provided. They were accompanied with bowls of water.

We wetted the hard rice paper with the water. It was quite intriguing to see how the stiff rice paper became soft and malleable in a jiffy. I guess it takes some practice to wrap the ingredients into a decent roll. Amateurs like us had to be contented with this performance.

The goi cuon was okay - not a wow. The ingredients were plentiful but did not taste fantastic. Perhaps I did not use the right sauces. 

This was a plate of fried koay teow. There was generous amount of meat, fish cake, mushroom and vegetables. The koay teow, like those in Katoomba, were fat and thick. I guess for this type of frying, the thick koay teow are okay.

This plate of fried mee is definitely not okay. I think it was Alan who opted for it. The noodles were deep fried and turned out hard and wiry. The ingredients were pork and seafood. There was simply not enough gravy to soak in the noodles to make them soft and more edible. 

My choice, as always, was the beef noodles. I have never been to Vietnam - but someone in the course of the meal mentioned that the Vietnamese beef noodles in Australia are better than those in found in the native country; the reason being the much superior quality of beef in Australia. The bowl of noodles served to me was huge. For the first time ever, I could not finish the bowl. Perhaps it was because of the goi cuon I had. The taste of the noodles was okay. The soup was clear and sweet. But all in all, it definitely could not match the ones I tasted it Melbourne. 

Finally, this was a plate of crocodile meat that Leonard had. It was stir fried in a chilli sauce with onion and served with rice and salad. I sampled a piece of the meat. It was like a cross between chicken and pork. It was not bad - all lean, soft and tender. This was my first taste of crocodile. Talk about food exoticism. Asia is supposed to be the leader. Looks like Australia is not very far behind with kangaroo and crocodile and god knows what else.

It was a mediocre meal. The servings were large. I think this was a quantity rather than a quality sort of place. 

I definitely enjoyed the company more.

Quang Vinh

With the fantastic hospitality we received in Melbourne, I really felt I needed to buy my hosts a dinner. Unfortunately, Joyce was not with us. Alan stayed back in Melbourne after work (he lives in Geelong), and we all went for a Vietnamese meal in St. Albans. 

St Albans is a Melbourne suburb very near to Eddy's place. It has a large Vietnamese population and I particularly like their pho bo (beef noodles) there. The restaurant that Eddy and Alan chose was the Quang Vinh - a Vietnam and Chinese place. The place is apparently very popular with the locals in St Albans and the neighboring suburbs. It occupies 2 shop lots and was almost full house when we arrived.

The menu in this restaurant was wide-ranging. It had the Vietnamese pho bo which I observed a lot of people eating and Chinese dishes. Service was brisk, efficient and business-like. No friendly personal touches. Like all Vietnamese eating places in the vicinity, tea was complimentary and served in small thermo flasks.

Eddy, being the "resident" diner, did the ordering. He hesitated on the first dish - the Vietnamese salad - which he deemed too expensive at 30 Aussies. I plodded him to go ahead to order. And was I glad I did. For it turned up to be fantastic. This so-called salad had lots of boiled pork, prawns, jelly fish, some onions, basil leaves and carrots, topped with some crunchy peanuts. The whole thing was mixed in a spicy sweet and sourish clear sauce. It was delicious. The pieces of pork was wonderful in taste and texture. The jelly fish was crunchy to the bite. The prawns were very fresh. Good to the last morsel.

This clay pot tofu was cooked with salted fish, and some minced pork and mushroom. It was another delightful dish. The aroma of the salt fish was tantalizing. It went very well with the rice. The tofu was soft and smooth. It was simple yet so very delicious.

The next dish was perhaps a typical mat-salleh selection. It was pork ribs in a sweet and sour tomato sauce. It was as stereo-type as it could get. Yet it was delicious. The pork was tender and deep fried to a nice crisp before being stirred in the tomato-based sauce. 

I think we asked for choy sum but the vege dish turned up to be kangkong. But heck, no complaint. The kangkong was great. It was fried in a spicy sauce, but it wasn't sambal belacan. All the same, it looked and tasted like the kangkong we have at home.

The squid was deep fried in a salted egg yolk batter. Salted egg yolk batter is rather new and is now very popular in Malaysia. I was surprised to find it down under as well. The aroma of the salted egg yolk was rich and enticing. The squid was very fresh. It was a superb combination. A great sinful dish.

The last dish was the Mongolian beef. It was sizzling beef on a hot plate cooked, I believe, with oyster and soy sauces. It basically was the same hot plate beef that are so common in Malaysia. I don't know why they call it Mongolian beef. I seriously doubt the Mongolians cook their beef this way. Anyway, it wasn't bad at all. The beef was tender - typically Aussie quality. The taste was good.

I have to mention the custard apple juice that Crystal ordered. I have tasted some fabulous Australian custard apples - in Malaysia, not in Australia. They are darn expensive - up to RM45 for a fruit. These Aussie custard apples are super sweet (unlike the sour Malaysian variety) and smooth. The juice that Crystal had was a concentrated glass of this delightful fruit. It was sweet and absolutely marvelous. 

The dinner at St Albans was most enjoyable. The food was great. We talked about our lives, my hosts' Aussie experiences and reminisced on our Malaysian pasts. Could the evening be better than this?

Sao Nam

Walking into this restaurant made me feel a little like being in Vietnam still in the height of the last war. We were greeted with some communist paintings - depicting workers holding banners of hammer and sickles and even one of a soldier with an AK47. There was also a nice golden bust of Uncle Ho Chi Minh, placed in a location of reverence.

Sao Nam in a Vietnamese restaurant on the ground floor of the Empire Shopping Galley in Subang Jaya. The name apparently means "southern star" and indeed the yellow Vietnamese star is prominent between its name. It is one of two restaurants in the Klang Valley - the other being in Tengkat Tong Shin in the Bukit Bintang area. This restaurant in the Empire had apparently been moved from the Sri Hartamas Shopping Centre.

 

Aside from the communist undertone, the restaurant was very nicely decorated, with pleasant colours, contemporary furnishing and bright agreeable lighting. A glassed off area formed the kitchen that looked very clean and organized inside.

We were there one evening for something different and we got it. The menu looked very attractive. Everything in it looked so good.

We started with a Hue pancake. It was like a small pizza. The crust was made from rice flour and egg, topped with chicken, seafood and some raw bean sprouts. The bean sprouts on the pancake may not look very appetizing, but it was actually very good. In fact, I felt the bean sprouts complemented the pancake very nicely. The pancake was served with an array of veges and fruits.

The Hue beef noodle soup (pho bo) was somewhat lacking. I guess after the beef noodles in Melbourne, all other pho bo outside Vietnam would be lacking. The bowl of noodles was rather over-spiced, the portion of beef was ungenerous and the soup did not have the oomph.

Next was the grilled egg-plant (brinjal). It was served with the skin removed, with some chillied fish sauce and topped some ground peanuts and spices. The brinjal was soft and smooth and tasted very delicious. A very pleasant dish indeed.

Finally we had the imperial lotus leaf rice. It was seared rice wrapped and steamed in a lotus leaf. It was presented rather unimaginatively with four inedible pink flowers. But the taste was good. The rice was done just right - soft and springy. In it were pieces of shrimp, egg and lotus seeds. The concept of steaming partially fried rice in a lotus leaf was new to me and I liked it very much.

The meal was different. We sampled a bit of everything - rice, vege, noodles and even a pancake. I enjoyed the variety. But it did not come cheap. The 4 dishes plus drinks came up to more than a hundred bucks. For some reasons, Vietnamese food like its Japanese counterpart, is becoming very expensive nowadays.

Over-priced Du Viet

This Vietnamese restaurant was recommended by a family member. Apparently it served very good food. I don't know if it was really that "very good" but it certainly burnt a big hole in my pocket. The place we went to was Du Viet. It is a swanky place on Jalan SS21/37 in PJ Uptown, not far from where defunct Fajar Supermarket used to be.

The entrance up a flight of stairs was rather impressive - even grand. It was tastefully adorned and led us into an equally impressive dining hall. The decor was contemporary and nicely done. The tables and chairs were comfortable and there were even a couple of sofas for easy relaxed dining.

But the place was devoid of patrons. We walked into a big nice restaurant and we were the only people there. It should had been a nice feeling having the whole place to ourselves (kinda like having booked the whole restaurant for our exclusive dining) but it was not. I didn't like the void. Any restaurant so empty cannot be good. It was after awhile that a few other customers started to walk in.

We were attended by a Myanmese lady who spoke Cantonese. We made our orders which I thought was quite sufficient for the 3 of us. But she kept insisting that we did not have enough - that their servings were small and that we should have the big orders instead of the small ones. We ended having more food than we could eat.

Our starter was a mixed grill platter. In it were spring rolls, sugarcane prawns, roast beef, chicken and various types of salads. It was served with some rice papers which were used like a popiah skin to wrap the goodies in. There were 2 types of sauces. The plate was very pleasant. The roast beef was particularly delicious. I liked the assortment of veges that went very well with the meats in the rice paper.

We had the beef stew with white radish. It was chunks of meat in a spicy gravy. The white radish (lobak putih) tasted better. But there was not much of it. The gravy was nice. I guess it was not a bad dish. But we didn't really enjoy it. Perhaps we were put off by too much of the meat.

Next was the braised duck in a nutty sauce. Again, it was chunks of meat. This was one time we were really meat-saturated. The gravy was very oily. The duck was over-cooked and had lost its texture. It wasn't a very happy dish.

The chef's tofu was rather ordinary. It was in a spicy tomato sauce. The taste was rather strong. I was neutral to this dish.

Finally the fish... It was a deep fried haruan (snakehead or 生鱼). The fish was fried with its scales to a nice crisp. It was served with various types of salads and 2 sauces. The ugly fish did not look very appetizing. The skin was crispy but the meat was rather flat and tasteless. Nevertheless I still enjoyed it. Eaten with the salads and the sauces, the fish was really quite good. 

I ordered a cup of Vietnamese drip coffee with my meal. It was a tiny cup and came in the typical Vietnamese coffee making container. It would be more appropriate as an after-meal. But it was served before the food, so it was rather cold by the time I got to it. The coffee was was smooth and strong. I enjoyed it. 

The damage of the meal was close to 200 ringgit. The fish was about RM50. The coffee was RM7. We asked for some water and we were billed RM1.20 for a small cup of "mineral water". I do know if it was indeed mineral. If it was, they should had served it in its original bottle instead of pouring it into small cups like below. We had 4 cups of those and I felt cheated paying RM4.80 for them. Our daughter asked me not to make a scene and I left it as that.

Du Viet has 4 outlets. Beside PJ Uptown, they are also in KLCC, Pavilion and Sunway. However, it is very unlikely that we will be back there any time soon.