#14 Huong Vuong 2 (150 Victoria St)

Attendees: Emma, Steph, Beata

Chopstick Chowdown this week is unexpectedly overshadowed by a street festival. With Victoria Street blocked off from Church St to Hoddle St (incidentally the scope we have set for ChChCh) the street is buzzing with life, activity and most of all lots and lots of people. This does not look like Melbourne...I am imagining being in Saigon.

Smokey food stalls sell barbequed corn on the cob, parcels of beef in bentel leaf on skewers, pork balls, fried squid tentacles and much more. There is a delight of smells and sounds and the occasional waft of burning. Each restaurant seems to be represented by a food stall. In addition there are stalls selling cheap clothing, DVDs and meditation (how the man is meditating amongst this cacophany one can only speculate...). I am most fascinated by the numerous sugar cane juice stalls where whole stalks are fed into a machine which spits juice out one hole and mascerated sugar cane out the other. Finally to complete the picture there are carnival rides.

However, the challenge must go on and after 20 minutes of searching for a parking spot and fighting my way through the hundreds deep festival crowd, I finally joined Steph and Emma at Huong Vuong for another dose of pho.

Another small cheerful place with the customary plastic tables, hard chairs and less than 27 items on the menu. But contemporary enough to be showing the Australian Open tennis on the regulatory plasma screen.

Pho is the speciality but we are also able to score some spring rolls. They are delicate, light and tasty. The size of a little finger they go down easily in two bites and although I am not able to discern what they contain, they are perfectly crisp and hit the spot.

The beef pho is good. The noodles are slippery and soft, the broth safe and the beef very thin and tender.

Proxy number 13 is chicken combination pho. The broth is delicious with a great body and saltiness. There is a wealth of chicken matter in the soup. Tender chicken pieces, a dark brown 3D rectangle (which we assume on tasting to be liver), kidneys and giblets. We are dubious after our previous giblet experience. “It’s like chewing on an ear” still echoes in my head. But I am prepared to give giblets another go and this one is nowhere near as chewy. Still one giblet was enough. Steph opts for the pork on broken rice which comes with a fried egg on top looking great.

Overall not much to fault this little pho eatery.







We lurched back out into the street to find dessert at the festival. It was banana coated in glutinous rice and batter. Fried. Smothered in a sweet coconut sauce with translucent bubbles (tapioca?). Yeah it was good!

Ratings

Beef pho 8/10

Spring rolls 7.3/10
#13 (chicken combination pho) 7.3/10

#13 Minh Xuong (154 Victoria St)

Attendees: Beata, Paddy, Penny, Andrew Be

I’m apprehensive at first glance. Let's be honest, the place looks a little dodgy. The old neon lights around the sign. A couple of lonely roast ducks hanging in the window.

Inside it is sparsely decorated and as we look around for specials Andrew comments, “this is the only place we’ve been to with nothing on the walls.” Blank, cream walls stare back at us with a small number of paper lanterns as the only decorations. The meagre clientele looks hungry for a cheap feed. The tea comes in a stainless steel pot as opposed to the thermos we have become accustomed to.

We are excited about number 27 - jellyfish with shredded chicken. None of us know of jellyfish as anything other than something you squelch under your feet at the beach. When we order the waitress fires back that they are out of jellyfish. "It's unlucky number 13 then," Penny offers. Suddenly we are ordering braised pig trotters. When in Rome...

The food comes out all at once, with a disregard to the concept of entrees and mains. We scramble to make room for all the dishes.

In his first week of Chopstick Chowdown Challenge, having passed the inititation of finding the restaurant from minimum directions and securing a table, Paddy decides to dive straight in with the trotters. The meat is tender, the skin is slimy and it is all drowned in a ginger-flavoured gravy. Having had limited (by limited I mean zero) trotter experience, I feel they have done a good job. It is akin to a well-cooked casserole. Andrew avoids tasting the trotters and squirms at the traces of hair on the skin. Paddy quips “I’m sure the pig would have no qualms about eating you with hair”.

The peking duck is dry and so underwhelming that the meal is complete before I realise I still have piece left. It includes julienned raw carrot and sweet, floppy translucent strips. This is not what I expect of peking duck. Andrew questions where the sauce is. It seems to already be inside the pancake wraps. There goes our option of smothering something in sauce.

From the specials we choose the szechaun beef. It is advertised as hot but we beg to differ. In fact a dollop of chilli sauce is just what this dish needs.

I am not impressed with the pork and prawn dumplings in broth. The dumplings taste of sub-standard meat while the broth has no taste.

The pick of the night is the black bean chicken claypot. It comes out still sizzling and hits the perfect balance of flavours and saltiness. Furthermore the chicken melts in your mouth.

When it comes to ratings, Andrew refuses to rate the trotters, saying his prejudices will get in the way. Penny scribbles 'boo' on the voting card. When pressed he said he would give it 5 for novelty value. I discount this from the final count.

Despite a few gripes, nearly all the food is finished. Paddy happily stands out the front and gives it thumbs up.

Ratings

Pork and prawn dumplings in broth 4.6/10

Peking duck 6.3/10

#13 (braised pig's trotters) 7/10

Special (szechaun beef) 6.9/10

Chicken and blackbean claypot 8.1/10

N.B. Bonus points for finding the incongruous Anchorman reference in this post.

#12 Thanh Nga Nine (160 Victoria St)

Attendees: Steph, Beata

Thanh Nga Nine is a cheerful place. Last time we walked past it on a warm summer night it was bustling with its front window open and looked like the sort of place where Vietnamese food meets a bar. The décor is colourful and despite it being over a week into January, the Christmas spirit it still here.

The bar is loaded up with a variety of bottles (plus the innocuous giant plastic lettuce) and has some day-glow signs. There's plenty of noise from ice-crushing machine and a colourful concoction in a tall glass topped with crushed ice keeps being ferried out. There is a back section partly partitioned off and past the feasting families you can see into the kitchen. The front sign advertises a free function room and karaoke but on this night there is no sign of tipsy tone-deaf Bon Jovi wanna-bes.

The menu thanks you for supporting ‘our family dishes’ and has pictures of the house specialities. There are so many sections of specials on the menu (vegetarian, thanh nga, chef's...) we feel slightly overwhelmed. We pick our special from the first page of house specialities and the rice paper rolls from traditional Vietnamese dishes.

First out is number 27 – vermicelli with shredded pork and spring rolls. “This is like make your own salad,” Steph comments. In a big bowl are mounds of noodles and bean sprouts, topped with halved spring rolls, slivers of pork and cucumber, crushed peantus and sprigs of mint. Vietnamese food done well is crisp and refreshing and so this dish is, especially with some spicy sweet chilli dipping sauce poured over the top.

The pho is disappointing. While the broth is OK it is nothing special and the beef looks grey. The pho loses major points for the chewy and at times grisly meat.

For the special we feel we should get something prawn related as there are prawns in all the newspaper snippets on the door. We stick with the safe option getting the chilli prawns over the mushrooms stuffed with prawns. Plentiful sweet and spicy sauce with array of vegetables, though we are not too impressed with the presence of common supermarket button mushrooms.

The rice paper rolls come out last. Steph describes them as a “taste sensation” and indeed there are many layers of flavours and textures. From first appearance it looks like pepperoni pizza in rice paper. Inside there is vermicelli, bean sprout, egg omelette, thin slices of Chinese sausage and surprisingly crunchy peanuts. We debate whether the minute golden bits are tiny dehydrated shrimp or fried onion. I rate this highly for its imaginative combination of ingredients.

I like the atmosphere at Thanh Nga Nine and it is busy. When we pay the bill, the waiter cheerfully asks us if we enjoyed our meal. Sure.

Ratings

Beef pho 5.3/10

Rice paper rolls with Chinese sausage 8.3/10

#27 (Vermicelli with spring rolls and shredded pork) 7.3/10

House speciality (Chilli prawns) 6.5/10

#11 Thanh Ma (172 Victoria St)

Attendees: Beata, Steph, Andrew Bl, Craig

It is the Sunday before Christmas and with many of our friends frantically busy with the festive season, we still manage to get 4 people together for the last Chopstick Chowdown of the year. Craig enjoyed Chopstick Chowdown Challenge so much the week before, he is back for another dose of Victoria St dining.

The first page of the menu announces that they have added new dishes to their 'traditionally family favourites'. Indeed the menu is extensive and unable to distinguish what might be family favourites or otherwise we stick with formula. Although from looking around it seems like Vietnamese pancakes are a speciality here.

Service is a little slow and we grab our own bowls. They are not on the ball with our tea either, as it unexpectedly runs out between mouthfuls of spicy food. Our conversation is distracting and far-reaching, from starting a union for over-worked young laywers to not realising you are being set-up at a dinner party where everyone else is in couples.

As chance might have it, number 27 is rice paper rolls. They have a tail of long chives strands. Again the rice paper rolls fail to impress with a dryness.

Upon Steph's request we have the pork and prawn Vietnamese coleslaw. It is crisp and refreshing, with a touch of dressing.

We scour the menu for pho. There is a variety of soups listed, but where is the pho? Judging by the corresponding menu photo we go for the han. If it sounds like pho, looks like pho and tastes like pho, we will count it as pho. And this is one of the best we have had. The noodles are exceptionally thin and light. The broth is so delicious I don't even bother searching for my usual condiment additions. Particular exciting is the bonus hard boiled quail egg floating in our soup.

From the chef's specials we go for the 'salted and pepper squid'. Despite the Vietna-glish, it's pretty good. It looks appetisingly golden and fresh chilli gives it the right kick. We play it safe with the other main getting the chilli and lemongrass beef, which also goes down well.

We celebrate the last Chopstick Chowdown for 2009 with a couple of beers and plenty of laughs across the road at the Avairy, and look forward to the gastronmic delights that await us in 2010.

Ratings

Beef han soup 8.4/10

#27 (pork and prawn rice paper rolls) 6.3/10

Special (salted and pepper squid) 6.4/10

Vietnamese coleslaw with pork and prawn 7.5/10

Chilli and lemongrass beef 7.6/10