Vietnam restaurant ‘one of Adelaide’s great dining experiences’
THE family behind Vietnam restaurant at Pennington started with nothing but have created one of Adelaide’s best Asian eateries.
I CAN’T be sure but I reckon I’ve been busted. Spotted. Rumbled. My cunning scheme to pose as just another paying customer, a ploy that works more often that it doesn’t when dining for this column, has just gone up in smoke.
How do I know? The giveaway is when the perfectly lovely waitress who is halfway through taking our order is ever so gently sidelined by another staff member of greater seniority. It’s a manoeuvre I’ve seen before, but normally somewhere that is on the lookout for reviewers and desperate for approval.
Vietnam, a suburban restaurant with a following like few others, doesn’t need any extra help. As the staff uniforms all proudly proclaim, it has been delivering the goods since 1984, decades before this city became obsessed with the banh mi and pho that are now a lunchtime staple.
The Phan family are a terrific story. Dinh Phan and wife Suong Thi Ho were among the first wave of boat people from Vietnam to arrive in Australia, bringing only the clothes they were wearing. The success of this business, recorded in the awards and clippings plastered along one wall, stands as a testament to their hard work and determination, and looks set to continue in the hands of the next generation.
At dusk on a Sunday evening, when the traffic on Addison Rd is just starting to thin, Vietnam’s dining room is already in a state of frenetic activity. The locals clearly like to eat early. Big family groups are busy loading up their cold rolls, digging into steaming hotpots of rice or broth, reaching across for the last fried morsel. Staff are weaving their way through the narrow channels between tables, carrying trays piled with more supplies. A few hardy souls have taken the only seats still available, out front in the cold. We’re glad to have booked.
Even after a little online swotting in preparation, the breadth of choices in the menu is overwhelming and it would be easy to order way too much. My advice is first to ignore the Chinese section and then focus on the “Signature” and “Specials” pages. That’s where we were when our friend intervened. She listens to a few of our early thoughts, adds and subtracts where necessary and comes up with a selection of dishes that is more realistic in volume than what we were contemplating. There’s not a dud among them.
Salt and pepper eggplant look like plump chips but crunching into the brittle coating reveals a lovely, gooey surprise. Frying know-how means they are surprisingly clean and light but it is the feisty sprinkle of chilli, onion, garlic, spring onion and coriander that gets the pulse racing. More please.
Spring rolls are rolled in the chewier (in a good way) Vietnamese-style rice-paper and filled with a mix of prawn, vermicelli, mushroom and carrot.
The “special” seafood salad lives up to its moniker. It uses the more resilient, transparent glass or bean curd noodles and is served warm so the torn herbs and zippy lime-based dressing are wonderfully fragrant. Steamed prawns, scallops and sections of squid tube are tossed through in generous quantities, though I doubt any of it is locally caught. The same goes for the steamed fish that is spread over a platter on a bed of bok choy and topped with a chilli and ginger relish that could make a slice of week-old bread taste good.
The quails? Of course we had the quails, one of Vietnam’s main claims to fame. The little birds are split in half and presented to show off their glossy, lacquered skin but it is the minced lemongrass and chilli packed underneath that provides the big whack of flavour. Forget knives, fork and manners for a few moment and get stuck in.
Desserts range from the stock-standard fried ice cream to a well constructed panna cotta of lychee and passionfruit that gives an idea of what is planned when Viet Next Door is opened by the next generation of Phans.
For now, however, we can celebrate what Dinh and Suong have achieved. Halfway through the night, another legendary family of Adelaide dining, the Singhs of Jasmin, sit down to eat. Vietnam is one of their favourites, apparently, and they travel across town to come here. Recommendations don’t come better than that.
VIETNAM
73 Addison Rd, Pennington, 8447 3395, vietnamrestaurant.com.au
OWNERS Dinh Phan, Suong Thi Ho
CHEFS Suong Thi Ho, Ben Phan
FOOD Vietnamese/Chinese ENTREE $5.20-$18.90 MAIN $12.90-$52.90 DESSERT $8.90-$14.90
DRINKS Short wine list runs all the way to a Rockford Basket Press and Greenock Creek shiraz for $400-plus. Or settle for coconut juice served in the shell with a spoon to scrape out the wobbly young flesh. BYO $15
Open for
LUNCH and DINNER Tue-Sun
SCORE 7.5