Porkees Vietnamese Deli

Dr H., was finally a real doctor when she came back here to visit us in Brisbane! She also bought her boyfriend of six years along and I finally got to meet him. I've honestly never met the guy cause I work full time and with full time studying from those guys, it was far and few in between ever really catching up! Anyway, the three of us have a crazy love of super dirty burgers and so we tried, valiantly, go to the newly opened (at the time) ZePickle store in the Valley.

I shit you not, we spent a good fifteen minutes try to find a goddamn park in that place. We later found a parking spot in the shopping centre directly opposite to ZePickle. Only to find that it only opens for dinner, barring Friday and the weekend where it opens for lunch, and a late lunch at that. We were getting crazy hangry so we went to the first restaurant we saw otherwise, Porkees!

This place!

Below is their menu! Its the usual fast food assortment of Vietnamese dishes, vermicilli salad, pho, Vietnamese curry chicken, broken rice and friends. Apparently there is a massive lack of good Vietnamese restaurants in Hobart so Dr H., was pretty keen.

Classic Viet stuff

Dr H., got the roast pork belly banh mi, it came with finely shredded pickled carrot, coriander, cucumber, soy sauce and some eye wateringly hot red chili. The chili was so amazingly hot, like when you're a child and eat something spicy for the first time and you just cry and cry and cry, you lose all sensation in your mouth and regret every mouthful. That's how spicy it was. We pretty much downed all our Vietnamese iced coffees at once and then Dr H., stole all my cucumber to cool down her tongue. Aside from that the pork belly had uncrunchy crackling and wasn't very well seasoned either. I found the pickled carrot to be too fine a shred as well, turning mealy rather than crunchy.

Go to Scotts Road Bakery in Darra instead!

I got the com tam aka broken rice dish, this one came with a pretty balanced nuoc cham, a few slices of cucumber and a marinated pork chop. I wish the pork chop had a bit of a better colour and charry flavour to it, its pretty pale stuff and there wasn't enough bits? When Mama Pham and I do marinated pork chops at home, they've always got lots of charry spice bits of garlic, onion and lemongrass that end up falling off and sticking to the rice. 

Mama Pham would rage over this presentation

Porkees Vietnamese Deli
Atmosphere: 5, your standard deli! It was pretty packed when we went past.
Service: 8, super speedy and prompt service considering they were having so many customers come in and out.
Food: 5, nothing fancy. Its cheap for city food but expensive by Inala or Darra standards. 

District 1

I went here quite a while ago, just after the Storey Bridge event in fact! I want with Manda to the event thanks to some leftover passes from Dandelion. We walked there from the CBD and were late for our midday session, we barely got through 1/3rd of the Storey Bridge before we had to wrap it up and head home! As a result, we were pretty hungry and I was in maximum seek out mode for the best feed possible. Something that was near impossible considering the sheer size of the crowds that day.

That day was the day I broke my brand new phone as well, I'm not even sure how it happened. One minute I put my phone in my pocket, at the end of the bridge I pulled it out and the screen had fine spiderweb cracks all over it. It's a mystery what on earth happened to it but I was getting super hangry as a result!

So off we went to find food and we stumbled upon District 1, the then darling of Brisbane Instagram for its roast pork belly roll. Manda wanted something light and flavoursome so in we went!

This place!

It's got a mural of all the Instagram photos taken at the restaurant covering their front counter!

I love previewing meals

They also have cute succulent plants in recycled tinned lychee cans.

Lycheesssss

This was their specials menu when we went. Otherwise Zomato has a nice menu.

Manda got the lemongrass beef which came with the usual assortment of Vietnamese herbs, caramelised pineapple, carrot, cucumber, lettuce and bean sprouts as well as a side of nuoc mam. I found the colour of the beef to be quite bland and the flavours used in the marinade to also be quite one dimensional, it had lemongrass, soy sauce and onions. Boom, done. Manda enjoyed her meal but I wasn't impressed.

Meh

Same goes for this roasted pork belly banh mi which consisted of an admittedly great, warm and crusty baguette, mayonnaise, cucumber, coriander, pickled carrot, house made pate, caramelised onion and what I suspected was Sriraicha sauce on top. The pork belly had crunchy crackling but lacked flavour and meat for the rest of it. It was like they had trimmed off most of the meat for another dish and left just the crackling and rendered fat for this dish. Crackling and fat are great but you need that meat in there for contrast and body!

So much fat, and I love fat!

I got their coconut water and lychee frappe as well. As soon as I had a sip, I knew that they used the Thai brand of super sweetened young coconut mixture. I have no idea what its called, but its an iconic drink/cooking ingredient that I'm sure most Vietnamese children would have grown up with. This was blended with lychees, mint, ice to form a chunky lychee and coconut flavoured frappe. Chunky like I stop to chew all the bits of young coconut every few seconds chunky.

Why am I chewing my drinks?

District 1
Atmosphere: 5, tiny little shop packed full of busy tables.
Service: 5, counter service!
Food: 5, passable. I didn't think it was anything special but I'm super, super picky with my Vietnamese food. I wouldn't bring Mama Pham here. You think my complaints are bad, you should hear her in full swing.

RJIE: Banhi mi dac biet at Scotts Road Takeaway

On the same day that we went to 2B Thai, VGirl and I went shopping for groceries in Inala and ended up going to Scotts Road for some banh mi for breakfast! The shop is right across from the train station so it's pretty easy to find.

This place!

It's a pretty small little takeaway shop with your standard goodies and their specialty banh mi! Its got a serious reputation as one of the most authentic banh mi places in Brisbane. I know VGirl and JGirl both make the trip down here at least once a week!

Shop set up

So many drinks

I got the banh mi dac biet, the special pork roll basically which consists of coriander, pickled carrot, cucumber, slices of cha lua, char siu and pork meatballs, a smear of chicken pate and homemade mayonnaise! Everything was fresh and delicious with the bread being light, crunchy and fluffy.

VGirl gets the same thing minus the meat and normally asks for double the mayo. Its addictive stuff!

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!