Hanoi Hannah New Quarter brings vibrant Vietnamese to Richmond

Swan Street's a tough restaurant strip. So many options, so few able to last the distance. But the team behind Hanoi Hannah New Quarter hopes to break the hoodoo with their vibrant Vietnamese joint, on the corner of Lennox and Swan streets.

They've hired Ewert Leaf Architects (Neptune Food & Wine, Feast of Merit) to build a 110-seat dining room around a large bar. Separated by a sliding door but with its own Swan Street entrance is an express outlet that distils the menu's most transportable dishes.

It's the third Hanoi Hannah outlet for the Commune hospitality group – the first opened in Windsor restaurant in 2012 and Elsternwick followed in 2016.

Each has a slightly different focus. Here executive chef Anthony Choi (Circa, Cumulus Inc, Tokyo Tina) has been charged with adapting Vietnamese dishes for the fickle Richmond crowd.

Cha ca, a herb-strewn fish dish with rice noodles traditionally fried at the table, is cooked in the kitchen but delivered in a cooking vessel kept hot with a tea light, and lemongrass beef plucks the flavours from bo la lot (betel leaf-wrapped minced beef) and turns it into a stir-fry.

Cocktails toy with Vietnamese flavours such as mint, ginger and chilli, and the beer taps pull independently-owned Australian craft beers.

It's shaping up as a busy year for the group, which plans to launch a fire-focused restaurant and kiosk in Windsor this year.

Open daily noon-late.

79-83 Swan Street, Richmond, 03 9428 1058, hanoihannah.com.au