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Quang Vinh

Nina Rousseau

Vietnamese

I love those restaurants that buy the place next door then whack a great big hole in the middle wall. Quang Vinh clearly needed the extra space because this joint is busier than Berlusconi's lawyers.

Bumper families, the old, the young, the besuited and the tracksuit-clad all pile into the no-frills dining rooms for flounder, noodles and giant bowls of noodle-choked soup.

Waiting on the easy-wipe tables is a spread of condiments: fish sauce, soy, red vinegar, chopped birdseye chilli, chilli oil thick with chilli flakes and teeny-tiny dried shrimp.

In pink neon, "Quang Vinh" glows above the fridge stocked with Heineken, coconut juice and ultra-sweet Asian drinks.

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Oysters with XO sauce were a sensation: fat, juicy, not over-steamed, with the slight beginning of firmness, and littered with dried shrimp, fresh green and red chilli and chopped spring onion.

From the tank, a $45 barramundi — weighing in at about 1.1 kilograms — is a bargain, and the whole fish could easily feed six or more. Per pound, a mud crab is $25.80, a lobster $50. The steamed flesh of the barramundi was perfect — white, moist and shiny — and the strong soy in which it was sitting didn't overpower the taste. Long strands of spring onion and clumps of ginger were cast on top, not integrated.

It sounds great so far, doesn't it? But know this: the restaurant's service was outrageously haphazard. Drinks appeared at random, one unordered, the other never came.

Some dishes — not ordered — were plopped down on the table, such as prawn spring rolls, cross-hatched like logs with generous amounts of iceberg lettuce and Vietnamese mint for wrapping. The filling wasn't great, stock-standard and not very "prawny". Better were the peppery pork spring rolls we had ordered — bingo! — stuffed with minced meat, slivers of carrot, mushroom and taro. Cardboard-tasting ling fish was a surprise, forgettable if not for its yummo salt-and-pepper batter.

As for Quang Vinh's speciality, reports vary. Many say it's the hu tieu noodles, thick ribbons of rice noodle, in soup or stir-fried. The combination hu tieu xao thap cam was smoky and generously loaded with tender squid, juicy pieces of chicken, baby corn and more. Others claim the speciality is pork broken rice, a classic done well with a thick pork chop, plenty of skin and fried egg. Then others nominate the salt-and-pepper chicken ribs (ours didn't arrive). I reckon it's the seafood, but maybe it depends on the night.

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Drinks double as dessert, such as smoothies whizzed up with custard apple; three-colour, layered concoctions of coconut milk, beans and jelly; or Vietnamese coffee made with condensed milk and ice.

Quang Vinh is a hoot, a relaxed and boisterous experience. It seats 200 and is packed every day, so perhaps I'm the only one who got a raw deal on service.

nrousseau@theage.com.au

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