Eating Out: Melbourne Vietnam Noodle House [251 Swanston Street Melbourne, 3000]

On the dreaded day of the release of our ATAR scores, my friends and I went out to try and keep our minds away from it. We ended up here for lunch at around 2pm and it was still a little busy which is a good sign right?
Took me a little while to choose, I wanted the bun bo hue, pho and the vermicelli dish. I ended up choosing the vermicelli dish as I haven't had it in a while and it's SUMMER. In my mind bun bo hue and pho are more winter dishes.
Also their chinese on the menu is completely screwed. 75% of the menu is listed as 特别牛鸡粉 even for non noodle dishes.

Sugar Cane Prawn and Spring Roll Vermicelli $9

After mixing in all the nuoc cham (sweet/salty/sour/spicy sauce) I found it the vermicelli very sweet. Surprisingly it tasted good sweet as the sugar cane prawn was quite salty. Unfortunately they took the sugar cane out before serving the dish =[ I like chewing sugar cane. The spring rolls were crispy and filled with a pinkish paste.They were mediocre, not what I was expecting. I really liked the addition of peanuts as it gave it some more flavour. Overall a good dish but not spectacular. 

Food: 7.5/10 No one really said much about the food. I think it was average, nothing to shout home about.

Environment/Service: 8/10 Everything came on time. The place was clean. 

Value: 8/10 Lunch for under $10 in the city, not bad. Serving sizes were on the smaller size.

Verdict? Might come back for pho. MIGHT

Cooking: Dead simple viet style chicken noodle salad

I love Vietnamese food.  So many fresh flavours. Sweet, sour and salty. To rank my favourite viet dishes is pretty much impossible. Viet pork rolls, viet noodles soup, bun bo hue, rice paper rolls, typical stuff because I haven't really explored much further than that although I loved reading Pauline Nguyen's cookbook.

So last weekend (yes, a little behind in blogging) parents when to Prahran Market and came back with a box of 12 jam filled doughnuts and a roast chicken. Doughnuts were really good and delicious. Coated in a little sugar. Pure deliciousness. Anyways made a simple refreshing lunch with the roast chicken.

Ingredients: Rice vermicelli. Cucumbers and carrots julienned. Roast chicken. Nuoc Cham/Dressing: Sugar. Warm water. Chilli flakes. Fish sauce. Lime juice.

Method: Cook vermicelli noodles according to packet and leave to cool unless you want a warm salad. Make dressing by dissolving sugar in warm water. Adding chilli flakes, lime juice and fish sauce according to taste. Arrange shredded roast chicken and vegetables on top of the vermcelli. Pour some dressing over it and mix and enjoy. 

I removed the breast of the chicken and cut them into slices (hence why there is a chunk of chicken on the top) Managed to shred the chicken with a knife and one hand. It was pretty fun to do (probably because I kept sneakily eating it =] )