As per the usual order of business, I was meeting with a good friend in South Bank for the usual arrangements. Which meant finding a good place for lunch. This time around, I was given the reins. Still, not so expensive is good, and I like to make sure all parties are happy - so that was a few trials before landing on a place. After looking at a few places within the vicinity, it was just going down to looking at places and offering them as possibilities and it landed here - at Viet de Lites.
Inside it fairly laid back, clean and not with a lot of decorations. It is more aimed to have the atmosphere of al fresco dining, and the colour schemes are calming using a middle green. All the tables outside are shaded under umbrellas, but my friend and I were inside were it was considerably cooler and had a bit of air conditioning.
With the service that the two of us had, either they train the waitstaff to a really good degree - both in terms of form and personality - or we happened to strike luck hard and got a really good one for this session. Not only was he friendly, but he knew the menu very well. This came in handy, as my friend was not too familiar with Vietnamese cuisine. Plus, he really likes duck and often gets the craving for it. As I talk about the said dish - or dishes - as they come, this will be embellished upon. It was really quick, efficient and combining with the sunny atmosphere, had a real open and friendly air to it.
Well, it is straightforward what is served here - it is traditional Vietnamese cuisine. There is a good range of rice-based dishes, noodle-based dishes, some soups and enough choices from each kind of meat to satisfy most people (that includes vegetarian); it balances out well with spicy options dotting the menu. Quite well balanced, and everything is done fresh and sans additives. From it, I could taste a real difference.
First order of business for me was the drinks. Here is an equation: I love coffee, secondly, at a Vietnamese place I always check to see if they have the signature drip coffee, if so - well, I order it. If that was somehow not on offer here, I would not have typed that last sentence. By the by, the brown version is called "Ca Phe Sua". Bonus points for them, I got to see the show - or part of it. This is where they get a glass and put a bed of condensed milk in it, and a small contraption is put over the glass and the coffee slowly drips onto the milk. When it is done, take off the contraption then stir the two ingredients until they are combined. If you have ice - which I ordered - pour it into the glass with ice and then enjoy.
Any coffee fans here who have not tried this, stop what you are doing and find the nearest place that does it. The condensed milk is certainly sweet, but not overtly so and creates a creamy texture that makes it one of the most simple, yet unique iced coffees you can get. Now, you can enjoy one without all of the guilt and calories. If you are looking for that buzz that coffee brings, it is not from here - just thought it ought to put that out there.
Starting off, knowing my friend was fairly new to Vietnamese, and wanting to sneak in a starter - I won't lie here, I did ask what the waiter recommended. First up, it was what was the best entree. What he recommended was "Tom Lui", perfect for two people since there were two skewers. These were grilled prawns that were liberally dosed with a garlic marinade. These prawns were well cooked, and there must have been about three or four to a skewer and they were juicy and sweet. You could well see the amount of garlic that they had used - it was sure going to ward off vampires that night.
Well, even though it ended up with us being the dishes swapped around, there was sharing done - so it is all good with me. While reading through the lunch specials, which were what beckoned us in, those were not quite to the liking and far from what I consider to be Vietnamese cooking. Looking at the basic menu, there was more there that was appealing and it did not cost all that much more.
Again, it is a big menu so choosing what looked the best was not all that easy. In the end though, something simply appealed a lot more than the others and that happened to be the dish "Mi Quang". This just sounded to amazing to pass up, it had the winning combination of sauteed pork and prawns, which were then mixed with yellow tumeric noodles and a lot of bean sprouts, flavoured with mint, and coriander, before being topped with roasted peanuts and served with sesame rice crackers. It even looks good just picturing it, and this is one to take a picture of if that is your sort of thing.
It was fantastic. The sauce made from the combination of peanuts and spices made it a little like a satay sauce, one thing that I surely too biased about to really critique - I really love the taste of peanuts, and peanut butter in particular. This creates a rich sauce that gets thick easily. The pork meat was fantastic, not too fatty and moreish, and the giant prawns were also quite sweet. Bean sprouts were not just another aside; there was a good quantity of them mixed in with the noodles and they added quite a crunch, and the noodles were moreish and soft. The two rice crackers acted well like roti to Malaysian, soaking up the sauce.
As I was saying, my friend is a big fan of duck. Therefore, he was asking the waiter what he would recommend in the way of a good duck this, and the waiter doing the right method was whittling it down by asking what particularly he wanted in the dish. It ended up being a dry curry, "Vit Xao Hung Que". This was a stir fried duck flavoured with plenty of basil, and it was at least half capsicum - told you this place was healthy.
It was the simpler dish by far, and this might have been the leanest duck I have tried. This was some juicy meat, and the capsicum was still crunchy and starting to sweat. If a bit light, basil was certainly present in flavour. Not a bad dish at all.
So, yeah. In short words, I can say that this place is one of the more worth of eateries that dot themselves along South Bank's famous dining precinct. Healthy for sure, generous with portions, yes. Maybe not among the best like the neighbouring suburb, but it did fill me up for the day.
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