Star Restaurant, Footscray - Vietnamese BBQ

The same friend that introduced me to Ba Le brought me to Footscray on a cold winter's night to try the table top BBQ at this really old school restaurant, which came highly recommended from her Vietnamese friend. Usually Footscray isn't a suburb that I like to head to at night, but given the recommendation there was no stopping us...we were just praying for a parking lot close by to the restaurant so we wouldn't have to spend too much time on the street. And we got one just outside. Love the signs!

Unfortunately there were only 3 of us, so we couldn't order all the stuff that looked really interesting

It was a pretty empty night but apparently weekends are super packed

Next time we go we want to try this

We ordered the beef BBQ and some spring rolls to share. The BBQ came with sauce and rice paper rolls.

This was the marinated beef. It had leeks, onions, lime, lemongrass, sesame seeds and goodness knows what else was in the marinade. My friend's Vietnamese friend said she tried replicating the marinade at home, but was never successful. So yes, it's good.

All the stuff to accompany the BBQ as well, to go inside the rice paper rolls.

All good to go!

The rice vermicelli goes into the rice paper rolls too

The grill gets heated up, with oil dabbed on the hot plate

We ordered soursop drinks on the side. This was lovely.

And on went the beef!

Basically everything goes inside the rice paper roll, and you wrap it yourself with the beef right on top.

Just like this - and to be eaten with the dipping sauce.

The spring rolls were good too

What it looked like inside the roll.

This is the place, you can tell them you found it right here on this blog.

Chin Chin, Flinders Lane

As an Asian person living in Melbourne, it was initially difficult for me to understand the hype over Chin Chin - why would any good Asian who appreciated food patronise an Asian restaurant run by a non-Asian and frequented by everyone but Asians? Especially when Melbourne has no lack of good Asian restaurants. However, curiosity and the crowd got the better of us, and we decided to try our luck one weekday evening. Since it's a no reservations place, we headed to our favourite bar nearby for pre dinner drinks while waiting for them to call us when a table became available.

Finally made it inside, with these paper placemats cum menus on the table.

We ordered a jug of the Vietnamese Mint to start us off

It was an easy drink to gulp down...too easy perhaps

We went for the degustation which was around $60 per person, and started off with a serve of the salt and pepper squid served with Vietnamese mint leaves, chilli and nuoc cham, a fish sauce dip. Not a terribly complicated dish to prepare, and this was executed well. Thumbs up.

 

Next came the kingfish sashimi with coconut cream and lime. The last time I checked, I was pretty sure that kingfish sashimi wasn't a staple of Thai and Vietnamese cuisine. But this was brilliant, somewhat similar to the raw fish that one has with porridge in Singapore (minus the coconut cream).

 

Even though it was a weekday night, the place was packed solid. 

Stir fried green beans with coconut in a cashew sambal. Interesting - we'd never tasted anything quite like this before.

I have no idea what this curry was, but it wasn't memorable anyway. Not good, not bad. Just one of the courses that we felt went all right, but wouldn't order again next time.

This was my absolute favourite dish of the evening - the twice cooked short rib that came with a sweetish sticky sauce. I usually don't like meat that's too sweet, but the texture was fall-off-the-bone tender. Great with steamed rice, with a bit of fish sauce to offset the sweetness.

And to end it off, a mango and honeycomb dessert to share.

Love the bar decor - just simple mosaic but it works.

I went there again another day with another group, and tried the corn and coriander fritters - I wouldn't bother ordering this again. It was oily and heavy, classically overfried.

The Miang - betel leaves with braised lamb - was interesting, but this for $12 was kinda expensive.

The southern style yellow curry with mackeral and pineapple was pretty good, but on the sweet side. It was great with the roti.

Again, super crowded at lunch time.

I headed there again alone yet another day and sat at the bar at the far end, just next to the kitchen. It was a great seat cos I got to see them prepare the entrees.

A kingfish sashimi for myself

A salt and pepper squid for myself. And, not pictured, a beautiful cold glass of Pikes Riesling.

Got the photos I couldn't take previously during dinner - the light was great

And that's how they do it

I also had the pork and crab cake with a salted duck egg dip. This was pretty amazing.

Not sure how they made this salted egg sauce, but it was the best thing...I ate every drop up.

Super crispy crab cakes - definitely very happy that I ordered this.

It was messy to eat but I wouldn't have it any other way.

What it looks like on the outside.

Was I too judgmental at the beginning? I don't think so - the dishes I had were completely non traditional - short rib isn't a cut that Asians normally use, the salt and pepper squid is better known for being served at Cantonese restaurants instead of Indochinese or Thai places, and I've never seen sashimi served with coconut cream. However, whatever the chef is doing, it WORKS. It's tasty, it's yummy, it's not 100% authentic, but it doesn't matter. It's worth a go.

Website: http://www.chinchinrestaurant.com.au/

Ba Le at Footscray, Melbourne

I got back from a quick trip to Melbourne in late August and promptly flew off for a 2-week long work trip after that, and I've been so dying to write this post ever since. Sometimes, when I eat a wonderfully memorable meal, I'm thinking as I chew on how to do the blog post - Ba Le was exactly like that. It was SO good that I drove back 2 days after my first time, for a final taste before flying back to Singapore.

Ba Le is a small Vietnamese sandwich shop located about 100m away from Footscray Market near Flemington. If not for the Chinese words, I would never have guessed that Ba Le actually means Paris : )

When we walked in, there were amazing sights of all the food in the display that greeted us. They're a banh mi shop, meaning they do the baguettes filled with meat.

My friend had other ideas - she steered me to what looked like ham, sausages, cured meat and fishcake.

There was a lot of incredible looking stuff on display

This was what we ordered: fish cakes, pork with sticky rice cakes, and the large flat cake in the middle with cinnamon (verbatim). From the internet, I learnt that these preserved meat rolls that look like sausages are called cha lua, or silk sausages.

And we also picked up one kilogram of the rice noodles - these were similar to cheong fun.

The shop owner slicing off a wedge of the flat stuff with cinnamon for us

All the stuff that we couldn't buy

After that, we headed to the Little Saigon Market round the corner to pick up mint, holy basil, and lettuce, before heading home. Here's the entire spread:

All the pork/fish cakes all sliced up, about 5mm thick. The stuff on the bottom right is the pork cake with sticky rice - the grains clearly visible.

My friend made the dipping sauce by mixing fish sauce with sugar and water, with minced garlic and chillies added. Tasted just like the Mekong spring roll sauce! Ba Le sells this sauce too, but my friend's was better.

We couldn't find the correct lettuce, and had to settle for iceberg instead. The lettuce is supposed to be the variety with the curly leaf edges that is used for popiah.

Sitting out on the balcony for breakfast in 12 deg C weather!

So she used scissors to cut the rice noodles into 5-cm wide pieces.

First the greens go into the bowl

This is what the rice noodles look like up close. They were amazingly soft and supple. Better than any kuey teow, kuey chap, or cheong fun that I've ever eaten. The stuff that dreams are made of.

Stage 2 of assembly

Throwing on the lettuce and meat slices

And finally adding the sweet/salty sauce before devouring the first of many bowls. It was perhaps the most memorable meal of my Melbourne trip.

PK, I love and hate you forever for creating this life-long desire for Ba Le. I'm even craving it as I'm typing this post out now.

Ba Le

Shop 3, 28A Leeds Street

Footscray, VIC 3011

Tel: +61-3-9687 2985