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Ah, the duplicitous trap of Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, where rents are high and customers are fickle. How many storefronts must we see change hands every few months – perfectly good restaurants coming and going – subject to the whims of choosy locals and erratic weekend revellers? How inconsistent are the fortunes of these businesses, where the difference of just a block or two can make
getting noticed that much more difficult.

This, I fear, is the potential plight of Rue de Thanh, a restaurant that opened in April on the precarious end of Brunswick Street, closer to Alexandra Parade than to Johnston Street, and far from the fashionable blocks of Gertrude.

Located in the former East Meets West site, owner Thanh Tran has poured a tonne of sweat, love and, yes, money, into the space, taking what was a small and fairly drab dining room and turning it into a much larger and more appealing space. White-painted bricks with black accents highlight a long bar and chef’s counter running down one side, while pots of herbs, to be used in the tropical-leaning cocktail list, grow in the window.

It isn’t so designed that it feels overly trendy, but it is considered and pleasant, and a vast improvement over what was here before (although the soundtrack of bland pop music does the space no favours).

Rue de Thanh is serving some of the most interesting, forward-thinking and delicious Vietnamese food in town.

Tran has 20 years of restaurant experience and has brought in Thi Hong Nguyen, who came to Australia from Vietnam four years ago, as head chef. Together, they’re experimenting with notions of what Vietnamese street food can be and in what contexts we might want to enjoy it. Tran wants the experience to be like an izakaya, or, in the case of the chef’s counter – where Nguyen serves a special $80 chef’s menu – a fun and casual (and relatively affordable) degustation.

The cooking is sometimes tinged with French techniques, an entrenched tradition in this cuisine’s heritage, thanks to France’s colonisation of Vietnam in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It also takes cues from Tran’s background working in Mediterranean and modern Australian restaurants.

Cured trout ($24), singing with ginger and citrus and dusted with wisps of baby fennel, might be served in dainty curls that form a semicircle on the plate. It’s a play on goi cá, the classic Vietnamese fish salad, but it has elements of crudo, as well as Australia’s love of new ways to treat and adorn fresh seafood.

Oysters are served raw or grilled ($4.50 each), the latter topped with a fragrant onion oil and a scattering of crushed peanuts. Pan-seared scallops ($24) have their oceanic flavour ramped up by the addition of dried shrimp, along with celeriac puree and chilli oil.

Banh khot ($18), small, crispy, savoury pancakes, are made using coconut and turmeric, their pudding-like centres holding tiny, plump school prawns. Herbs and lettuce come alongside for wrapping and a subtle nuoc cham is provided for dipping. It’s a textural marvel of a dish, one that I find myself daydreaming about regularly.

Also habitually entering my lustful dining memories is a glorious roast duck ($45), its skin crispy, its flesh pink, served in a lush jus flavoured with red and black dates, shiitake mushrooms, lotus seed and lily flower. It’s a plummy, meaty, wonder of richness and showcases Nguyen’s talents as a chef with impeccable technique.

Out on the floor, Tran shows himself to be a generous and enthusiastic host, the type of person who built a business on his own enthusiasm and wants to impart that excitement and love to his customers.

Despite all this, the dining room at Rue de Thanh has been almost empty in recent weeks, a product, I assume, of the challenging aspects of Brunswick Street mentioned earlier. It isn’t on the stretch of street that teems with foot traffic and unfortunately Tran doesn’t yet have enough of a track record in Melbourne to lure folks looking for a destination meal.

Most days, he’s working the floor and the bar by himself, with Nguyen alone in the kitchen, from morning until late at night, six days a week. It’s a brutal schedule in a brutal industry. But that’s where we – hopefully – come in, because Rue de Thanh is serving some of the most interesting, forward-thinking and delicious Vietnamese food in town. It deserves to succeed. Let’s make it happen.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine