La Vong Ling Fish is Hanoi pan fried tumeric fish with fresh dill and shallot. served with salad, vermicelli noodle, fish sauce dressing and crushed peanuts on the side.
Nem Viet
96 Willoughby Rd
Crows Nest, Sydney
Sitting right in the middle of the bussling restarant hub of Willoughby Rd Crows Nest is Nem Viet. They serve up a range of good sized traditional Vietnamese dishes in their casual restaurant. It’s a popular food type in a popular food area and they do a good trade as a result.
We decided to have a range of starters and began with an old favourite of sugarcane prawns. These delicious golden delicacies are made from grilled prawn meat on sugarcane sticks. These came in a serving of two with each sliced diagonally to create the impression there were four there. It made it easy to eat and share this way.
The stunning net seafood spring rolls - or cha gio hai san - were fried spring rolls made with net-like rice paper creating a webbed look. They were filled with crab meat, shrimp meat, taro, yam bean and wood ear mushroom and tasted great.
The beef betel leaf - or Bo Nuong La Lot - was not what we expected with betel leaves. Normally its a flat leaf with topping that is folded in to eat in one mouthful like a small wrap. These were like mini spring rolls woth the leaf as the “pastry” layer and a beef filling. These beefy treats were so good.
Our one “main” was the La Vong Ling Fish. This is described in their menu as Hanoi pan fried tumeric fish with fresh dill and shallot. served with salad, vermicelli noodle, fish sauce dressing and crushed peanuts on the side. It’s a busy plate but combining all the ingredients makes for a delicious mix and the fish was cooked perfectly too!
Nem Viet is actually BYO for wine too so we were able to bring a light sparkling Peterson’s House Rose from the Huner Valley which matched nicely with the light fragrant Vietnamese food.
We left Nem Viet full and satisfied. There was a lot more on the menu that we wanted to try, but there’s always another day!
