Mekong (Vietnamese Restaurant)

Mekong... me, MM, Mouse n HW went to Mekong last week for lunch. I haven't been there for ages. Since MM and HW never been there, here we go to this popular vietnamese restaurant in the city.

Some Spring rolls to share

The spring rolls are nice n crunchy, but what you eat is mainly the wrappers and the ingredients inside are too little... However, the light sweet chilli sauce on the side goes pretty well with these little spring rolls.

Sliced chicken breast noodles soup

Me and Mouse have ordered the same thing ~ chicken breast noodles soup. I've put in some bean sprouts and mint leaves into the soup. I think the addition of the light mint taste n some crunchy texture from the bean sprouts are yummy. Also, the soup is lovely with lots of slices of chicken breast in it.

White coffee with almond jelly

Mouse has also ordered this drink ~ She thinks the drink is too sweet, but she does like the jelly bits in it.

Broken rice on the lots

HW's rice. It has pork, chicken, fried egg and some vege on the side. They also give you a small bowl of sauce (same sauce as the spring rolls) to go with it.

Beef slices & beef balls noodle soup

MM has ordered the beef noodles soup. She quite like it,esp the noodles, but she felt that the beef balls got too much of the tendon stuff in them.Other than that, she enjoyed it.

Since Melbourne Vietnamese Noodle House (here for the review on MVNH) is next to Mekong, there is no doubt that customers will just automatically compare them together. Me too. I think there is no drastic difference in terms of the food at these 2 restaurants, however, Mekong's dishes (noodles) have bigger portion and have more ingredients on the soup as in they give more chicken breast slices or more beef balls on the soup =D


San transforms *Transformer rocks!*


Mekong
241 Swanston St
Melbourne 3000 VIC
Phone: (03) 9663 3288

Melbourne Vietnam Noodle House

Tis the season I am sick. :( Been coughing and hacking and sniffling over the weekend, so when we decided on a lunch-place today, San and my sister decided that we would go somewhere where I can have soup so we went Melbourne Vietnam Noodle House. It is a place where we do go rather often, and I have a few favourites there...in which I did not eat today. So when I do eat it, I'll review those dishes. Or something.

The place itself!

Anyway! Because I was sick, I was limited to only noodle soup. I usually will have the Sliced Chicken Noodle (small $6.50) but I thought I'll try something different today and opted for Special Beef and Chicken Noodle (small $6.50).

Nice selection of dishes.

They often serve the noodles with bean sprouts aka TAUGEH, something I absolutely cannot eat due to a past-life enemy encounter (前世有仇) I had with the vegetable. I very politely told him to forget about the taugeh, but the guy brought it over anyway. What a waste.

boooo Boooo BOOOOOO!!!

My noodles came first and...

Urm...okay. Yellow floating thingies does not equal lifesavers.

What a surprise. First of all, I didn't know that "Special" in this case equates to "hell lot of intestinal stuff". There's tripe, intestines, guts, bones, I don't even know what. I was literally horrified as I hate any kind of intestines that existed (although less than taugeh; under torture I would eat intestines, but taugeh can go hang itself). I picked out all the unrecognisable stuff i.e. stuff that's not beef/chicken meat before I ate my noodles. There were also some floating yellow bits in which I THOUGHT was little quail egg yolks, but upon eating them, they were not. They didn't taste BAD, but my sister jokingly said they were eyeballs and THAT gross me out. I mean, I doubt they were eyeballs, but I don't want to end up eating kidney or pancreas or whatever.

For the record, there were only two pieces of chicken. *SAD FACE* So no, I didn't enjoy the noodles, but the soup as usual was great. Full of flavours and a squeeze of lemon really made it tasted super. If I had gone with my normal sliced chicken, this would be a good review!! But nooo, I had to be adventurous (read: stupid). By the way, if you're a great intestines fan, you'll probably like this. And the soup. Honestly, if there's something I really love about this place, it's their soup with the soup noodles.

Both sis and San had the BBQ Grilled Chicken on Rice Vermicelli with Fish Sauce and Vegetables ($7.50).

This is what I really want and couldn't have.

Glowing reviews from both girls. The BBQ chicken (in which I had in the past, and stole some today) was succulent and juicy and was flavoured just right. I've always loved their chicken, it's very yummy, and not the conventional BBQ chicken. Viet style, maybe? :D They also served the dish with quite a lot of chicken. It's a dry noodle dish, with the special sweet-sour sauce where you pour over your noodles to wet them a little. San found the sauce to be just right, Sis thought it could use more sauce. San also thought that the peanuts were a little stale-tasting, but she found the mix of vegetables, noodles and chicken a very refreshing and crunchy bite, and everything went well together. Sis was just stuffing her face, so I gathered she liked the noodles.

Sis also had a glass of Coconut Green Bean ($3.50).

Icy cold and nice.

She thought it was really good, refreshing after the noodles, but also a bit too filling. It's not too sweet much to San's liking, but sis wouldn't have minded it sweeter.

Slight Mouse grouse here though - I find it ridiculous that the drinks are so expensive. I mean, it's almost half the price of a bowl of NOODLES. The standard pricing of drinks in Chinatown and the general cheap eats are always around $2.50 - $4.00 in which I found to be overpriced. Drinks should cost significantly less than a main dish, not half the price of a main dish.

But yes, I have been a frequent visitor of Melbourne Vietnam Noodle House and I don't see why I would stop in the future. When I first began going to the eatery, it was mainly Vietnamese food; now they've started serving Thai and Chinese-fusion style food. I find it to be a variety but it does take some of the little "Vietnamese-ness" of the initial place. Service's generally quite ok - nothing to shout about but mainly due to some communication problems, I feel. I do prefer this one to its biggest rival Mekong though, if more for environment's sake.


- Mousie

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Melbourne Vietnam Noodle House
251 Swanston Street
Melbourne 3000
Phone: (03) 9639 4911