Category: Vietnamese

Categories
Thai Vietnamese

Nam2 (Nam Squared) – Green Square/Zetland NSW Restaurant Review

Nam2 (Nam Squared) is a pan-south-east-Asian restaurant located in Green Square. A quick Google tells me that it is related in terms of ownership and management to Mr Nam, one of my favourite Vietnamese restaurants in the South Sydney area. Nam2 also happens to be co-owned by the husband of one of the people I work with, but rest assured this will be a fully objective review.

Given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic this is a takeaway review.

The Rare Beef Saigon Pho ($14) is very good. The flavours are on point and the beef the perfect done-ness, which is rare for delivery pho. There is an ample provision of bean sprouts and leaves, which is again often lacking for delivered pho. According to my colleague this is a borrowed specialty from Mr Nam. I can recommend this dish.

The Lot Noodle Salad

I enjoyed most elements of The Lot Noodle Salad ($17). It features crispy pork belly (TBH only ok), BBQ chicken (also ok), lemongrass beef (good!) and a spring roll, and while some of these elements are not so strong by themselves, the combination of all four elements is synergistic and ensures one never gets bored. The vermicelli is soft and fresh, and the remaining salad elements – herbs, carrot, and daikon, really bring the dish together. Would recommend.

Nam’s fried rice

Nam’s fried rice ($19) was probably the most disappointing part of the meal. It is advertised to feature spanner crab, brown butter, egg roe, and salted egg shaving, however most of these elements (apart from the tobiko) seemed missing in action. It was difficult to identify any crab or salted egg shavings. The flavour overall was OK, and I did appreciate that it was not too salty, but as the most expensive dish that we tried it was really quite underwhelming.

Saigon Spring Rolls

The Saigon Spring Rolls (4 for $8) were good and I thought much more fairly priced than at Mr Nam. No complaints here.

Nam’s Dry Suki Seafood

The Nam’s Dry Suki Seafood ($19) with glass noodle, egg, mushroom, and “Chinese kale” was good. The flavours were quite nice, and I enjoyed the noodle and mix of seafoods. I didn’t enjoy the mussel but I don’t enjoy mussel in general.

Chicken Nyonya Laksa

The Chicken Nyonya Laksa ($14) is very good. Very similar to Mr Nam’s, if not identical. I liked this so much that I actually bought this for a mate and brought it to work for him for overnight dinner.

Overall I think Nam2 is worth a try. Their food is quite good, and they do have some $10 meal deal specials on weeknights for those who want to pick up the food themselves. I am also glad that there is no markup for DoorDash, which is a rare treat. I will order from here again.

UPDATE, DECEMBER 2020

We had the pleasure of having our work Christmas dinner at Nam2. I won’t go through all of the things we ate but it was a very extensive banquet menu with two courses of dessert that are not pictured here.

The highlights of the meal were the shrimp in betel leaf, scallop on XO sauce and vermicelli, deep fried barramundi, beef skewers, vegetarian stir fry (believe it or not), deep fried shrimp in dipping sauce, the spring rolls, and the egg atop the stir fried beef dish. If you have a chance to order any of these dishes a la carte I highly recommend it. I also take back my previous comment about Nam’s fried rice – I could definitely identify the spanner crab pieces this time.

Nam2
13 Ebsworth St, Zetland 2017
 02 8003 3393

Categories
Bakery Vietnamese

Chillilime Matraville – Matraville NSW Takeaway Review

I have never had a worse roll.

Chillilime Matraville bills itself as an Aussie take on the Vietnamese banh mi. After trying 3 of their offerings after a night shift I think it’s safe to say that they should’ve let what was good just be.

In general I found their rolls very bready. The bread was thick and not light like a banh mi baguette should be, and it was neither crispy nor soft, just hard. The rolls were also very overpriced, and I paid a steep $37.49 delivered for 3 rolls.

The #2 five spice pork roll was $9.50 at base, with an extra $0.10 each to add tomato, onion, and sriracha chilli sauce, as if the first two weren’t already essential components of a banh mi. The mild flavours unfortunately got lost in the bread, which you will find is a recurring theme of food from Chillilime.

The #4 meatball roll with tomato, beetroot, carrot, chilli, coriander, onion and cucumber came to a staggering $10.20. Each of these listed ingredients attracted a $0.10 surcharge on top of the $9.50 base price.

The #10 breakfast roll was $9.50. The bacon, egg, tomato, cheese & mayo made this roll the tastiest of the bunch, but again it was let down by the sheer volume and blandness of the bread.

It would seem that the “Aussie twist” that Chillilime advertises is just being overpriced and overbreaded. Do yourself a favour and get your next banh mi from one of the many many better alternatives in the area. Hong Ha is just a couple of suburbs down.

ChilliLime
513 Bunnerong Rd, Matraville NSW 2036
(02) 9661 6665

Categories
Vietnamese

Golden Lotus Vegan – Newtown NSW Restaurant Review

I ate here last night with a recently vegetarian friend. She had initially wanted to go to Vina Vegan but as they’re closed on a Tuesday, and following a thorough review of other online food blogs we chose Golden Lotus instead. Vietnamese vegan food. What could go wrong?

No review of an inner West restaurant is complete without a complaint about the parking situation. I spent around 25 minutes on a weekday evening trying to find a park for my small car, through narrow alleys and one way streets, to end up in a 2-hour park 10 minutes away from the restaurant. My friend had a similar problem. In retrospect we might have had better luck trying to aim for a 7PM start, as that is when most of the clearways on the main strip stop being clearways.

Golden Lotus doesn’t do bookings, and we were allowed in after a short wait outside. It was jam packed, and we found ourselves sitting shoulder to shoulder with other diners. It really didn’t look like they had made any effort to support social distancing within the restaurant. Maybe they had missed the memo?

We had the Vegan Duck Pancakes ($8.80), the Stir Fried Mushroom With Combination Veggies ($18.80), and the Golden Lotus Combination Hot Pot ($17.80).

Around 30 minutes after ordering one of the staff came to tell us that the combination hot pot and stir fried mushrooms were quite similar, and that we should choose another dish instead. We had another dish that we had had in mind and asked to change to that, but she returned a minute later and told us that the meal was already cooked and it wasn’t possible. Thanks.

The food itself was a disappointment. The vegan duck pancakes had crispy protein and the right flavours, and I guess I grew to like it considering what came next. It turns out that the waitress was absolutely right about the combination hot pot and the stir fried mushrooms with combination veggies. They tasted extremely similar and I think could have been mixed together with no one the wiser. The dishes weren’t to my taste, and my vegetarian food colleague did not like them either.

There’s not much more for me to add. I didn’t enjoy Golden Lotus, and neither did my vegetarian friend. I wouldn’t recommend Golden Lotus Vegan for your next business lunch.