Bau Truong

One by one Marrickville's Vietnamese restaurants are losing their rattling trays of condiments, tissue boxes and cutlery canisters, and smartening themselves up. This relative newcomer has gone a step further than most with paper-on-cloth tables, a dramatic cerulean and acid-green colour scheme and oversized Chinese opera mask murals. There's even a wine list, elegant stemware and arty ceramics as well as delicately presented, occasionally modernised cooking. Rice vermicelli adds body to a delicate crab omelette and warm, wobbly rice cakes are topped with a pungent prawn and pork mince. Green papaya salad is all crunch and zing, studded with weeny crisp anchovies and fat prawns. Tender squid is stuffed with coarse peppery pork mince, and braised duck is meltingly soft and sweet, although without the complex notes expected from its preserved tofu sauce. A pyramid of raspberry, chilli passionfruit and kaffir lime-coconut sorbets gets trippy with pomegranate seeds and pashmak but packs a punch with pure, bright flavours.