152 Hopkins St, Footscray. Phone: 9077 9098

A couple of previous incarnations at this address – one of them Korean – came and went without us taking them for a whirl.

Going by the good trade they are doing this Monday lunch time, it seems a good bet that Phong Dinh will be around a good deal longer.

It’s a lovely room, cleverly using some of the more upmarket vibe of several of its Viet neighbours yet still playing the role of affordable noodle house, a fact attested to by the menu prices.

The colour scheme is a bit darker than your standard noodle joint, though, and the effect is calming and tranquil.

As well, there’s a semi-alfresco area containing a handful of tables from which observing the street hustle and bustle is no doubt a lot of fun.

My can of soft drink is presented alongside a tumbler packed with ice cubes – always a nice touch.

You’ll find pho here, but the list is a lot broader than that – there’s a heap of interesting noodle and rice dishes.

The “hu tieu mi”, which precedes the restaurant’s name in its signage, denotes a focus on rice and egg noddles, in soup or dry with soup on the side.

Bun thang ($9) is described as Hanoi chicken soup with vermicelli.

From what I’ve been able to discover, it’s a northern dish rather than one specifically associated with Hanoi.

And while there is some chicken – poached, small pieces, some with fiddly bones – it is matched and more in terms of quantity by the traditional ingredients of slices of splendidly eggy omelette that is both yellow and white and Vietnamese pork loaf (cha).

One seemingly knowledgeable source I found says the stock should be a mix of chicken and pork, but this – as far as I can tell – is chicken only, delicious as it is.

The accompanying plate of greenery includes not only the sprout-and-herb combo that comes with pho but also lettuce and cabbage of both white and yellow varieties.

This all adds some handy crunch and colour to a dish that needs it.

It’s a beaut lunch but very mild of flavour.

I usually leave the addition of lemon juice until near the completion of most soup noddle dishes I order; here it goes in early on – along with slices of fresh red chilli – to give it all a bit of a boost.

Still, the lighter touch is a winner for situations in which more meaty options may be a matter of too much of a good thing.

Phong Dinh strikes me as a very handy addition to the range of Footscray Vietnamese eateries.

You can Ms Baklover’s review at Footscray Food Blog here.

 Shop 7-9, Leeds St, Footscray. Phone: 9687 2680

These days, when desiring to be out and about in Footscray central, we find it rewarding and less time consuming to park by the railways tracks, just around the corner from the Dancing Mutt.

In the days when we were still falling for the folly of attempting to park on the other side of the CED (Central Eating District), we often passed Pho Tam going elsewhere, mainly because it always seemed so crowded and busy.

I’ve spent an aimless day-off half-hour wandering between those two outer extremes of the CED with no particular place to go, as that zealous fan of multicultural food, Chuck Berry, once famously sung.

It’s Pho Tam or retrace my steps. I am happy to step through the doorway.

I like the plain wooden tables and chairs, the Viet pop at just the right volume and smiling, prompt service.

I especially like the symbolic artwork in the windows that links maps of Australia and Vietnam with a bowl and chopsticks. Pity it doesn’t photograph too well!

Customers are few, and for my most of lunch’s duration I am alone.

The menu is varied and full of interest.

I consider the mi Quang Bennie and I had tried the previous week at the brand new Braybrook place Quan Viet.

I finally decide on a dish I’ve never before seen in a Vietnamese eatery – goat curry (ca ri de). At $11, it’s a buck more than the chicken wing curry (ca ri ga) and the stewed beef (bo kho). Instead of noodles, I ask for the bread option.

I am surprised to get two crusty rolls with my bowl of intrigue. Asking if it’s mandatory to fully consume both, I am told that there’ll be no dessert for me unless I do.

As I expect, my curry is thin, mild and on the bone.

I like it  a lot.

The meat comes easily from the bone, though I thoroughly enjoy eating with zen-like deliberation in order to preserve teeth into which I have invested many thousands to the vast enrichment of my dentist.

Unlike many other experiences with cheaper, bone-in cuts of meat – both at home and eating out – there is little obvious fat, though for reasons both to do with squeamishness and healthiness I do set aside the bits of flabby goat hide.

There’s onions galore – thin slices and thicker chunks of the adult variety; chopped and segments of the young, green type.

But as with roti and Malaysian-style curry, in many ways the main event is the gravy/soup and the bread – and I’m surprised that I devour far more of my second, lovely role than I had expected.

Still, I do not quite finish it, so … no dessert for me!

The Footscray Food Blog review of Pho Tam is here.

37 Leeds St, Footscray. Phone: 9687 1470

Expert assessment of my Saturday shopping list suggests Footscray Market is the best bet for ease and pricing.

I may struggle with the hambone, ham hock or bacon bones for the next day’s red beans and rice, and a visit to the market’s supermarket just for milk is probably unwarranted – but other than that it should be a sweet experience.

So it is I head up the ramps for the extremely cheap market parking, ending up – for the first time ever – on the roof. Great views!

First things first, though – never shop, especially in a cool market, on an empty stomach.

I’ve been a visitor to Hien Vuong 1 a few times previous, though with little or no recollection of taste sensations. Maybe pretty good pho and bo kho (beef casserole).

Nevertheless, after a nerve-jangling week I find the tiled floor, chromed furniture and Viet pop enormously comforting. This, today, right now, is where I belong.

It’s a hardcore pho joint that offers a little more variety than most.

Thus it is that I order the special chicken rice with chicken (com ga hai nam).

This is a gamble, no doubt. As the Vietnamese title denotes, this is a Viet twist on hainanese chicken rice of Malaysian derivation.

My strike rate at ordering this dish at non-Malay places is pretty much zero – ranging from utterly lame to the outright bizarre (the otherwise exemplary Carlton Chinese Noodle Cafe in Rathdowne St, review forthcoming).

I need not have worried, as my lunch is beaut.

There’s no soup, but all the other bells and whistles – so important for this dish – are present.

The chilli/carrot/fish sauce concoction on the side gets into the spirit of the occasion by coming with mashed ginger.

The rice is OK, but has no discernible chicken flavour. It’s studded with egg, slivers of fried onion and little crunchy grenades of crackly pork.

There’s three cucumber slices, two of tomato, a handful of elongated pickled carrot, and more similarly pickled carrot that is shredded and part of jumble with lettuce and mint.

The chicken is well-cooked, tender and – yes! – easily removed from the bone.

Best of all, all these components are in exactly the right proportions, with the last of each of them disappearing with the last mouthful. This is something that rates really highly with me.

Well-satisfied, I head into the market on my grocery mission just as the music situation takes a surreal turn with a cheesy cocktail bar Viet version of House Of  The Rising Sun.

A tip for semi-regular users of Footscray Market, as we are: The market has instituted a pay-station method of paying for parking. There is no pay station on the roof, so I make more use of the market’s lumbering elevators than anticipated.

Ms Baklover at Footscray Food Blog was in a particularly meditative mood when she had pho here.

136 Hopkins St, Footscray. Phone: 9689 8373

We’ve already been wet and cold and bedraggled at the morning rugby match, so venturing out for our Saturday lunch seems folly, especially as we are aimless in terms of our destination.

I have visions of someplace warm – of course! – and stews and soups of some sort.

Bennie brings focus to proceedings by announcing: “I’d like Vietnamese – not pho …”

Seated and perusing the Hao Phong menu, he narrows it down even more: “I’d like pork!”

Pork it is!

He gets the crispy fried egg noodles with roast pork.

As far as I can recall, this is the first time Bennie has had this style of noodles – crispy, browned from heat at the edges, going delectably soggy as they mix with the gravy/sauce.

He really likes his lunch. There’s a heap of big slices of nicely chewy pork. He inhales the bok choy, snow peas, baby corn and carrot. Turns his nose up, though at the zucchini and tiny Chinese mushies. Same as with eggplant – I’m working on it.

Hao Phong has been perpetually busy since it opened. Initially, I suspected that had something to do with the fact that its furnishings and vibe had just that little bit more of a swish feel than many of its neighbours.

These days, it’s starting to look like many other lived-in Vietnamese eateries hereabouts. It’s still busy, though, so we’re glad to have snagged a table so quickly on such a chiller of a day. Glad, too, that it’s warm and cosy inside.

I have a dish we’ve had here before, one that I’ve not seen elsewhere – Hainan chicken rice in a claypot.

There’s no soup/broth. And sadly, my lunch is lacking the crunchy brown and tasty bottom of rice that requires scraping from the claypot, which that has been a highlight of previous visits.

But gladly the stock-cooked rice is very good anyhow, especially with addition of the accompanying chilli and ginger sauces. And, thanks to the claypot, the whole dish stays hot-tending-towards-warm until finished – that’s pretty cool on a cold day and concerning a dish that is often warm or even cold to begin with.

The OK chicken is on the bone, but separates reasonably easily, though I am careful to munch with more delicacy than normal. In my experience, stray chicken bones = dental bills.

Instead of the snow peas of previous visits, my dish is completed with a handful of broccoli florets, which have nice element of bite about them.

This may sound and look like a modest meal. But for fans of Hainan chicken rice, it’s a very handy alternative – especially given it’s quite hard to find a killer version in our neck of the woods.

We stroll down to Cavallaro’s, grab some ricotta canoli and crostoni, and then head for home.

Passing the V-shaped Ha Long on the way to the car kicks off a discussion about places that were once regular haunts for us yet no longer are, so we stop at another – Touk’s on Charles St – for a coffee on the way home.

We’re in for the night – Playstation, a zillion games of various football codes on the telly, reading, blogging, lollies

100 Hopkins St, Footscray. Phone: 9689 1887

There are few – if any – restaurants we have visited more than Tan Huu Thanh during our decade in the west.

For a while there it seemed like a weekly, or at least fortnightly, event.

Recently, for various reasons – including the pleasurable yet mandatory restless wandering that goes with doing a food blog – visits have been scarce.

So it is with some glee that we enter for a celebratory dinner – hey, we made it through to hump day, OK? – on this Wednesday.

The kids are a bit older, one not yet born we started hitting this joint is a happy little chappie and the smiles of welcome are like old friends.

This is a non-pho place in the heart of Footscray’s Viet precinct.

There are intriguing nooks and crannies on the menu we have yet to explore, but we do have our favourites, after all.

We love the entree size wonton soup for $5. With a handful of plump dumplings reclining in a clear and peppery chicken broth, it usually comes with a few slices of roast pork as a bonus and is a pretty cool light meal all on its ownsome.

We adore the diced cube steak and rice (com bo luc lac) and its crispy chicken sibling for $9.50 – for us, state of the art for these dishes hereabouts.

But tonight, just for kicks and because it’s been so long since we dropped by, we are lashing out with an order for sizzling steak (bo nuong vi).

Available in $30 and $40 sizes, this is tasty, (mostly) healthy Vietnamese food – and also bags of hands-on fun.

Brought to our table, along with a gas-fired cooker, are plates …

Of cucumber sticks, shredded carrot and pineapple.

Of rice vermicelli.

Of herbs, bean sprouts and lettuce.

Of rice paper.

Then comes a platter – the glorious centrepoint of the whole performance – of finely sliced beef, pretty as a picture, sprinkled with lemongrass and obviously prepared by a deft hand using an extremely sharp knife on, I have been told, meat that is partially frozen.

Finally, there’s a bowl of a dipping concoction made of fish sauce, vinegar, salt, pepper and a little chilli; and another of a butter and oil mixed and laced with some more lemongrass.

Once the cooker is fired up, we slop on some of butter/oil combo and wait for the grill plate to get hot.

Then on the meat goes – and the intense entertainment really starts.

It’s a preposterous fun balancing the nack of getting the meat nicely charred but not overcooked while simultaneously soaking the rice paper in the hot water provided.

When the meat is placed on the now soft rice paper, we add some of the herbs, vegies, vermicelli and attempt to roll – using our inexpert hands – our custom-made masterpieces into neat and tidy taste parcels.

We fail! But we get by – and it all tastes fantastic.

Before we know it, the lot is gone – consumed, down the hatch, devoured with zeal.

At $30, it has to be said this is not a large meal in an eatery and neighbourhood where the same sum will usually buy more food than two people can eat.

But it suffices.

And it may be that it is traditionally meant as entree to be shared among a whole table of folk. I’ll ask about that next time.

And there’s an added, not insignificant and long lingering bonus – as with the non-cutlery eating of Ethiopian food with injera, bo nuong vi leaves the perfume of a great food experience on one’s hands for many hours after the eating is done.

Tan Huu Thanh offers a similar dish – lau bo nhun dam – on the part of its menu devoted to  large soups for sharing and steamboats, in which the beef is cooked in vinegar water.

But the one time we tried it, we found the vinegar flavour scarce and water method rendered the rolling of parcels – difficult enough with out clumsy digits – into an unsatisfactory and mushy experience.

As we leave, we resolve to check out some of the more intriguing dishes on the menu on future visits – or, at the very least, order the $40 bo nuong vi on a visit when we’re both ravenous and feeling well-heeled.

1/17 Nicholson St Footscray. Phone: 9689 3066

Knowing I’ll be flying solo on Christmas Day, with my partner cavorting with cousins in Queensland, I’ve loaded the fridge and shelves with all sorts of tasty stuff.

But by noon, a great urge to be out and about is upon me – despite being 150 pages into a 900-page tome by the remarkable Clive Barker and a bunch of freshly arrived packages containing cool sounds of the cajun, Tex-Mex, jug band and Yiddish pop flavours.

So out I head, although not with any great optimism about what I’ll find.

As I enter Footscray’s Vietnamese quarter, I realise how wrong I am.

There’s people everywhere, food everywhere.

With joy, I realise that not only am I going to be fed, but I also have a wide variety of choice – in fact, almost as many as on a regular weekend day.

So it is that I finally get around to tackling the bain marie goodies at Dinh Son Quan.

This is one of a handful of eateries that adjoin Little Saigon Market.

We’ve been in here heaps of times previously, but always for the non-pho soup noodles or a very excellent diced garlic beef with tomato rice. I’ve also had the banh xeo – a coconut/rice flour crêpe filled with prawns, pork and vegies – that went down well with Ms Baklover at Footscray Food Blog. I found it a bit dull and squishy.

No matter – I’m here today to sample the fascinating array of mostly braised dishes that fill the bain marie section.

There’s stuffed bitter melon, a couple of funky looking pork numbers and several fish dishes – that seems a grand way to go, with notorious fish-hater Bennie out of the state.

Doing Dinh Son Quan this way costs $8 for a choice of two dishes with steamed rice.

I pick a dusky cutlet of mackerel with a black pepper sauce and a simple stir fry of baby octopus, zucchini, celery, capsicum, tomato and coriander.

When my food is at table I am also presented with a bowl of clear chicken soup – always a good sign! In this case, though, the soup is too sweet for me.

The fish is nice enough, but fails to really excite and lacks much by way of pepper quotient. Likewise, the stirfry is lacking zing or, really, any kind of flavour punch at all.

I’ll try the Dinh Son Quan bain marie again – there’s plenty on which to experiment.

And I’m happy to accept my meal selections may be to blame for a disappointing lunch in this lovely place that always rolls out a warm welcome.

Besides, just being among the throng has put a skip in my step.

I even discover that Cavallaro’s, too, is open, so snag a single ricotta-jammed canoli for an afternoon coffee-time snack.

Huy Huy’s head-turning window display.

Cavallaro’s was open for Christmas, too, doing a roaring trade in canoli. I only bought one!