Add to your del.icio.us
190 Victoria St, Richmond
Ph +61 3 9427 7131.
Minh Tan II is a Chinese/Vietnamese restaurant in Richmond. I had never actually been inside, but i’d walked past this restaurant many times on my way to my regular haunt, Thanh Thanh, about half a block further down Victoria St.
Two friends if ours, John & Robert, asked us out to dinner. We decided that we would visit Minh Tan II, after Robert mentioned the food he’d eaten on previous occasions was fantastic.
We headed in and were shown to a table, where we began the task of deciding what to order off the vast menu.
Doing a food review when eating out with friends is great, because you can order a larger selection of items from the menu - because there are more people to share it with. This in turn gives you a better idea of the restaurant as a whole - as i’m sure you have experienced, most restaurants can do a few things well, but a lot of dishes can be rather average.
Inside Minh Tan II
While we were waiting to give our order to the waitress, I took a photo of the inside. Most restaurants in Victora St don’t see the need to dress up the interior, as they’re busy enough doing what they’re there for: serving up the food. Plus, if they did do a big renovation to make the place nice and new, i’m sure you would notice - when you receive your bill.
Having said that, there are a couple of modern newly-renovated chinese/vietnamese restaurants at the beginning of the Victoria St strip, but they mainly cater to the western crowd who want to try some fusion ethnic food (read: Asian food, bastardised western style) without losing any of their creature comfort$.
Anyway, after a short chat and some complimentary chinese tea, our entrees arrived.
Pork & Prawn Rice Paper Rolls (4), $8.00
We must have been hungry, as we’d eaten three of the rice paper rolls before I remembered to take a photo. Oops.
Deep Fried Soft Shell Crab, $0.00
Apologies for the blurred shot, it looked fine on the tiny preview window on the camera.
Deep Fried Quail (2), $12.00
As we were just finishing off our Quail, the mains started arriving. The table could have been a bit bigger to accomodate all the dishes, but somehow we managed.
Braised Beef Brisket Hot Pot, $14.50
5-Spice Salt & Pepper Squid, $15.00
Lemon Chicken, $15.50
The cook always knows there are some western people eating when they get an order for Lemon Chicken.
Lo Han Chai Vegetables, $14.50
Pork & Prawn Rice Paper Rolls
The rolls were made fresh, and were quite tasty. Decent amount of filling, also. Depending on how you like them to taste, I thought they could have done with a bit more Vietnamese Mint.
Deep Fried Soft Shell Crab
The only time I ever attempted to eat crab, I ended up with crushed shell all over the place and couldn’t eat any. Plus, I see those poor little buggers crawling around at the market and kind of feel sorry for them.
After some prompting, I tried it. Quite tasty! - though I thought it should have been a little bit more crispy.
Deep Fried Quail
Here’s another dish i’d never tried before. Although it’s hard to feel sorry for something that doesn’t even have a head (anymore), they’re just so small it seems almost a waste to be eating them. More prompting, and I tried it. A slightly stronger flavour than chicken, but i’d much prefer a duck - there’s just more of it. Also this one was slightly overcooked and oily, I think as a result of the oil not being hot enough.
Beef Brisket Hot Pot
This was the star dish of the night. All four of us agreed this one had plenty of flavour, and the meat was quite tender. There was some discussion about the translucent lumps in it though, Louis saying they were sea cucumber, and John thinking they were large chunks of fat. I hope it was the cucumber.
5-Spice Salt & Pepper Squid
The salt & pepper squid is one of my most favourite asian dishes, but this one was not upto my expectations. (Stay tuned for a Thanh Thanh review, it’s always great there.) The amount of salt and chilli in the dish was very minimal, and although the squid itself was fairly tender, it didn’t have much taste. It was too oily as well, and again I think the frying oil should have been hotter. When it was served I had to ask (repeatedly) for a dish of lemon and salt, which should be a standard accompaniment.
Lemon Chicken
There’s not much you can do to Lemon Chicken to stuff it up, but as you can see from the picture above, it too suffered from a bit of under-heated over-cooking. On the plus side though, it was reasonably tasty, the sauce wasn’t too tart, and the chicken itself wasn’t too dry.
Lo Han Chai (Buddha’s Delight Assorted Vegetables)
This dish looked rather delicious, but sadly the taste didn’t match. At first I thought i’d eaten too much chilli and had fried my tastebuds, but everyone else thought the same. The sauce seemed fairly rich, but there was obviously something lacking.
All in all, it was okay. I certainly wasn’t hungry after we’d finished, and I didn’t dislike the food. But I wouldn’t rave over it either.
I’d often wondered why I always seem to goto a few restaurants repeatedly rather than exploring, (one of the main points of starting this blog) but I guess it’s just when you find good places, you want to keep going back.
those transparent lumps are beef tendons. in other words, connective tissue. similar to the stringy bit you get on chicken drumsticks near the base.
Left by qsl on April 18th, 2007