CT Coffee and Restaurant

On New Years Day, VGirl, JGirl and I went to Inala to get groceries for our Banh Mi dinner party, hosted by yours truly. While we were there grabbing groceries, we decided to go for lunch! We randomly picked this place as it was one of the few places open and it had vegetarian options for VGirl.

It's in the Inala Shopping centre on the outside, its pretty easy to find.

This place!

Chay is the word for vegetarian in Vietnamese, so these are the dishes that they can make specially vegetarian! Bun rieu is usually a tomato and crab noodle soup. Bun cha gio is a spring roll and vermicelli salad. Banh xeo is the tumeric crepe stuffed with lots of veggies and meat. Out of those three options, the first one would be the hardest one to do.

The bun rieu is the exciting bit

They have a massive collection of artificial flavours for bubble tea. VGirl loves artifically flavoured bubble teas, like Healthy Cup, Easy Way, Hazel Tea, Cha Time and that sorta thing. She has an unhealthy disdain for real fruit in her bubble tea like that used at Sakuraya and Gong Cha.

All the colours of the rainbow!

Here is their super extensive menu.

I really like that the entire menu and all the labels are both in English and Vietnamese. As you know, I do love help yourself cutlery and condiments. The hallmark of any solid Asian restaurant!

DIY

Classic

JGirl wanted the pork chop and broken rice. It came with a little dish of soup that had a plain pork flavour to it.

Plain soup!

The pork chop was actually two pieces that had been split down the center, it was a pretty huge piece and it was exactly as the name suggested, pork chop and rice, nothing more, nothing less! The pork was tender, juicy and had a nice charry flavour.

Classic

I got the prawn mousse and vermicelli salad bowl. The prawn mousse here was odd, it was quite dense which is unusual for the style, the mousse is normally quite light and fluffy not this heavy almost chewy texture. I'm not sure what happened, but it was still pretty tasty. There was a good amount of salad veggies in the bowl and they were all very fresh looking, no dodgy brown bits here! The Vietnamese fish sauce mixture they gave me was quite bland, so I added extra fish sauce, lemon and sugar to it to bulk it up. 

Hmm~

I got the avocado milkshake. I forgot how super sweet traditional Vietnamese people make their drinks. I diluted it twice with water to make it palatable, a lot of Vietnamese drinks are super sweet and heavily iced so that they have time to melt and dilute it down. It is very refreshing on a hot day, I must say, but I'm a busy lady who ain't got time for that!

Its very pale, good flavour though

So here is VGirl's vegetarian bun rieu! It had lots of ripe tomato, tofu and egg pieces in the fluffy raft that is the signature of bun rieu. The soup was quite tasty and VGirl was very happy with her dish.

CT Coffee and Restaurant
Atmosphere: 8, super busy Vietnamese restaurant. It reminds me of home, especially with the huge tables of Vietnamese families with kids eating at the table, kids running underfoot, Paris by Night playing in the background and all the Vietnamese people everywhere.
Service: 9, really lovely. We got bossed around by the owner, who insisted that we sit down, take up the entire table and told us that of course they had vegetarian food! It's just like how my mum and aunts boss me around . . . even now, that I'm a grown woman.
Food: 7, authentic, cheap Vietnamese food and lots of it. What else could you want!

Little Sista

Little Sista! I have had this place on my go to list for quite a while! I just liked the name and the high rating on Urbanspoon to be honest. The menu on Urbanspoon looked very interesting as well, more options than your usual eggs/toast/big brekkie kind of options!

The place is a little hard to find as its right beside a skin cancer clinic. There is parking behind the building, but I always seem to pick random street parking to go there.

It was a dreary day the first time I went

The interior is lovely! lots of polished wood furniture, little photos and I really like the fresh flowers on each table.

Cute

I sat at this table both times I went

Cold display!

Even the front counter is cute

Here is their menu from the time I went!

They serve Campos coffee here but I decided to go with a soy dirty Chai! A chai latte with a shot of espresso to mix things up. It was pretty god even if they used what I suspected was a chai syrup since it was quite sweet. I'm not a chai purist or anything, so as long as it tastes good, I'm all for it!

Pretty though

I got the breakfast salad! This damn healthy kick has even got me eating salad for breakfast! Thought there wasn't much healthy with this salad hahaha, shard of glassy maple bacon, spinach, smashed avocado, soy roasted almonds, red capsicum, goats cheese and one sole poached egg! I really enjoyed this salad and all of its different textural components. I especially liked the crunch of the almonds, they were a lovely touch. I adored the bacon, and wish there was more of it, but I'm the kind of girl who would eat a bacon salad aka bacon with a side of bacon.

Pretty pretty

I got this tropical juice blend, apple, orange, watermelon and pineapple. For such a mild flavour, watermelon really gets all up in your face with this juice blend. I would've preferred a stronger pineapple flavour and balancing tartness in the juice, but I still finished it all, so who am I to judge? 

Juice fluff is weird

The second time I went here I got the Spanish baked egg which came in its own mini cobb loaf! The Spanish baked eggs came with strips of chorizo, an egg, tomato and bean sauce, a side of sour cream and of course the cobb loaf! I was really disappointed with this meal, the cobb loaf was delicious, it is bread, how could it not be? The tomato and bean sauce was quite watery and no flavour to it, I found it to be depressing as that was the main body of my meal! The chorizo was delicious but I've never found chorizo that wasn't. 

Little Sista
Atmosphere: 8, cute little cafe that seems very popular with mothers. Every time I went there was a rowdy group of mothers and their babies.
Service: 5, I don't remember anything special about it!
Food: 6.5, the baked eggs were disappointing but I enjoyed my dirty chai, juice and brekkie salad. I think having a crack at their lunch menu, would be the definitive decider for me whether or not this place was decent. With the way it currently is, I'd probably go back with friends if I had no idea where else to go.