July 2000 Volume 81 Number 7 "serving the protectors"
Dining
By Jason Squire

VIETNAMESE FLAVOUR Light and Clean

y partner and I found ourselves in the United Nations of food after a recent stroll along the city end of Unley Road. On offer are such cuisines as Indian, Moroccan, Chinese, Italian, Russian and Vietnamese.

I spotted Hot Wok Vietnamese Restaurant. It was an easy choice of dining venue as Vietnamese is our favourite Asian cuisine. The French colonial influence adds a distinctive difference to Vietnamese food, which makes it stand out from the crowd of often similar Asian cuisines.

The menu lived up to this fantastic cuisine. It has the mainstay of Asian restaurants, with dishes like short and long soup, spring roles and stir-fried meat and seafood dishes. However, in true Vietnamese style, it contains some very distinctive dishes, such as salt and pepper frogs legs, stir-fried frogs legs with lemon grass and coconut milk, mushrooms stuffed with crab meat, stir-fried diced beef in red wine and Vietnamese cold rolls.

I couldn’t persuade my partner let me order the salt and pepper frogs legs. I have eaten them before and, as the saying goes, they taste like chicken. We chose tom yum and chicken and sweet corn soups for entrée. These were great. The true tom yum flavours were present - lots of lemon grass, button mushrooms, chilli and coriander. Whenever its available, tom yum is the dish with which I start off any Asian meal. It gets the buds tingling and the brow beading. My partner’s chicken and sweet corn soup was thick and luscious - judging by the minute taste I was allowed.

For the true Vietnamese dining experience one must have cold rolls. They are rice paper rolls filled with a variation of seafood or meat ingredients, but their core is lettuce, cucumber and mint. They are served with either a mild chilli or peanut sauce. We had prawn and chicken as the meat ingredient and could have eaten them all night. They were big, fat and moorish. We happily ate them with salt and pepper squid and a serve of plain and fried rice. As with the other dishes, these were spot-on. The salt and pepper squid was crisp and light, not fatty and stodgy. We washed down the meal with the best accompaniment - cold beer.

One feels welcome in the restaurant’s accommodating setting, while the friendly staff were helpful throughout the entire evening, particularly when we quizzed them about various menu items. They we quick to pick up our desire for the total Vietnamese experience, and made sure this was achieved by changing the music in the restaurant to Vietnamese country songs. This attention to detail was noticed and made our meal that little bit more enjoyable.

Hot Wok is a great place to experience Vietnamese food, which lovers of Chinese cuisine should find lighter and cleaner. The stodgy French cuisine has been replaced and combined with clean Asian flavours, which makes it the perfect choice for those who want something different from Asian food.

Where:		Hot Wok Vietnamese Restaurant, 40 Unley Road, Unley. Ph: 8272 4455. Dinner seven nights - 6pm until late.
Entrée:		$3.80 - $5.
Main course:		$9 - $14.80.
Dessert:		$3.50 - $4.50.
Fully licensed and BYO with $5 corkage. Banquets available.

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