Review Mel's Cafe Footscray - Footscray

Best bun bo hue in town. The soup Is tasty and the choice of meat is great. I always ordered extra meat, as the price is reasonable. The condiments, lemon grass oil is a fantastic addition to the noodle soup.

Get the bun bo hue!! comes w all the drippings - pork blood, fish cake, tender beef slices and pork slices. Nicely spicy, but not too much that you can’t finish the soup!! And look on the surface - those little roundels on the surface ? That’s all that wonderful flavour!!

Pictures will not do this place justice. Have you craved an authentic bowl of Banh Canh Cua Thit Heo or Bun Bo Hue? You won't find it anywhere else in Footscray. Dong Ba has quickly became one of my favourite spots in the west. Meals being roughly 13-15 a bowl. You'll find the most authentic Vietnamese flavours and smell here. Don't take my word for it, go and experience this yourself. And if you are a durian lover, boy do I have news for you! Durian smoothie is the go here, feeling like a naughty cheat day? Give yourself a treat and see how you'll fall in love with Dong Ba just as quickly as me. I've been here so many times and every friend I've recommended it to has loved it too!

Yesterday was our fourth visit and it will certainly not be our last. I've read some past reviews and just want to say something in defense of this venue re the negative comments about menu items not being avail and staff rudeness. Please get a grip people... In these pandemic times there are shortages of ingredients and cost of ingredients is higher than ever. We all see it in the supermarkets. But like many traditional cafe style, authentic restaurants in Footscray, Dong Ba, continues to serve the same amazing $ value food with the most delicious, authentic tastes. So COME here for authentic true food, leave your pretense attitude on the pavement and do what we do... ask the staff whats good today? what do they recommend? Dong Ba is not marketing themselves as anything else but authentic flavored dishes served fast, fresh and amazing value.

Service is lacking, but food was decent. Not much noodle in the medium bun bo hue, toppings were good though.

One if the best BBH I've had in Melbourne, flavourful yet not too heavy

Bun bo was all right but customer service was not acceptable as they sold out many things in the menu, not even say sorry for anything, The waitress didn’t give us menu until we ask, Waiting for 15mins and said my food was out of main ingredients She didn’t reach my table to put down my food, she just said “excuse me” and i had to get my food from her hand. I could understand if she say something else rather than just “excuse me”

Just like some of the other reviews seen in this section; our experience was horrible. I’m usually not one to judge; due to other factors such as a staff having a bad day/short staffed etc. Y’know, everyone has bad days. BUT, having to wait for 30 mins after placing our order, and seeing other tables that came in AFTER us getting their bowls of pho before ours.. we started to ponder. We were then told that the pho was sold out for the night and only enough for (1) serving, but there were the 2 of us. Absolute nightmare and quite disorganised to be very frank. No, it is not the end of the world but- our time could’ve been saved. This could’ve been informed before, and for god knows what reason it was told only after 30 minutes, and after serving and waiting surrounding tables.. that’s just quite… distasteful and obnoxious. I’m sorry but never going back.. it was just a really bad experience altogether, from the first foot stepped into the restaurant, to getting very poor treatment. It was just very poor, perhaps we were unlucky.