TL;DR; Vietnamese street food, do I need to say more?
Right next to the Vietnamese bakery on Logan Road, a quaint little eatery has been set up making a great paean to the street food of Vietnam. While I cannot discuss much about how it is at the home base, if the food is enough to go by then it is pretty much a sure thing that the intimate, laid-back aesthetic is a welcome addition to the stretch of road here and a surprise to boot. This came right of nowhere to me, and I knew that somehow I was having to try it eventually.
It had been a while, but that sweet time came again. On the WWE Network, another PPV event was showing and this time it was Payback. So it was back to firing up one of the delivery services to get some lunch while the event was streaming. Initially, it was not without a setback. Being a bit out of the loop with the working week, I didn't realise the Monday - which was May Day - was a public holiday, and wondering why a couple of rejection notifications from UberEats about one place went to a plan B. Going onto MenuLog for a better chance, I went through what was open around the time and settled on Little Hanoi. That was good for one or two reasons, the primary one being that it is a local, and the second one is that it is audience pleasing - if my house mate is the definition of audience. And I got to say, there is another good and cheap Vietnamese place close by. So just nutting in an order quickly, the only thing left to do was play the waiting game.
Now here is the time for the service. They took their sweet time getting here, but it was not without reason. I can forgive easily, and was able to do so here. They came to the door, were apologetic and their reasoning was that they were quite busy at the store. That I can understand, since they were open on a public holiday, and that it is a small location so they would have had their work cut out for them. From my perspective, this shows that they are hard-working and have a good ethic. From that alone, shaky first impression aside, it is enough to let me want to support them some more.
The menu is kept very simple and small here, and acts a bit like a Cliffnotes version of what is usually on offer at Vietnamese places. There is only about a dozen or so items in total plus a range of drinks. It includes a few snacks to start with, then several main dishes which includes a few kinds of pho, a French dish (nice attention to detail there), some noodle dishes, broken rice dishes, and who can forget the bahn mis? Adding on some drinks to the menu, they have a good variety. There is a general selection of sodas, some juices, iced tea, and various specialty drinks including corn milk, coconut water, and the classic coffee. They are just short of calling it street food to get the buzz, which it more or less is.
If there is one thing that my dining buddy/house mate really seems to like (and heck, same here) it is a bahn mi with a coffee. Same here, and I more or less have made street talk/diner speak to refer to it as "burger and fries" because of how reliable I have found it to be. Naturally, I plugged in that order for two bahn mis and two coffees, plus got a serve of spring rolls as a snack, and a meal of bahn da tom - a noodle dish that had prawns, fishcake, pork mince betel leaves and a range of fresh garnishes and flavourings all in a broth.
It all made for a delicious and fresh meal, which was thoroughly enjoyed by both parties. It makes sense to start off with something simple, and that is the spring rolls. These were actually pretty good, better than most of the ones that are gotten as takeaway. They were filled with chicken, which was sweet and tender, along with a small bit of cabbage. The lot of them were hot and crispy from the fryer and satiated the appetite.
Onto the next part of the meal, it was the bahn mis. A big brain fart must have occurred, since I forgot to request chilli on either one. In the end though, I really don't think it needed to have any chilli since it had its own good taste. In both of the baguettes, there was a mixture of carrot, cucumber, butter, lettuce, coriander, pate and a home-made sauce that was a lot like caramlised onion. One bahn mi had fish cake in in, while the other had crackling pork. When it came to who got what, they were cut in half - simple as that. These are some of the best bahn mis that are in town, and you are talking to someone who has eaten quite a ton of them over the past few years.
The baguettes were robust and crusty, making them perfect to hold such a solid lot of fillings in them. The cucumber was crunchy, I think the carrots were what I was pointing out as caramlised onions (which was why chilli might not have been necessary, but it definitely would have added some more flavour to it), and the mixture of patea, butter and their home-made sauce was a thick and rich concoction which really made the sandwich. That, and some good quality meat as the meat of the sandwich. The pork was delicious, big huge chunks and having both the great crunchy crackling and buttery fatty parts on it was a treat. They are using good quality meats here, and the fish cake one was also good, with a distinctive flavour where they must have used a good variety of herbs in the mixture. Thumbs are way up for the bahn mis here, and I sense coming back a fair few times for them alone. Of course with coffee, which leads us to...
Well, the coffee. This was available in two blends, which I got one each of, but can't remember which one I had. Nevertheless, the flavour of the coffee was rich and strong and both of these were ordered hot. It is a good contrast, having the stark hotness of a coffee, met with something that is creamy, and has a smoothing sweet note to it. The combination works very well, and even might make me consider getting all my Vietnamese coffees hot from now on. They were simply a tasty little treat.
Now we get onto the big mother. That was the noodle dish, bahn da tom. This was a filling meal in and of itself. It was also solid, and well balanced. The bits of fishcake were scrumptious and well-seasoned, the number of prawn in there was generous and they were big suckers as well. That odd bit of betel-leaf wrapped pork was a nice find as well, and is a flavour that has to be eaten to know how it tastes. The noodles were plentiful and tasty, it had a good range of vegetables such as onion, tomato, mushrooms and beansprouts, plus the garnishes of mint and lemon balanced it out more. This was one dish that was both healthy and filling. We also can't forget about the sweet broth, which turned it all into a soup.
In rating this place as a 4.0, it is relatively low-key so there is not much reason to blow up expectations too much. What it does do well is quality and value, giving people something that is a decent price which still manages to be healthy. The service has an honest and hard-working professionalism about it, and this may be a candidate for the term "dark horse". It came out of nowhere, and I believe it will be staying put for some time to come. What I can say is good luck to them, and it is likely they will have it if the indications on this day are true.
An error has occurred! Please try again in a few minutes