Vietnamese food in Brisbane
I’ve been back from Brisbane for several weeks now but figured I’d do one last post on the food there seeing as I devoted so many of my meals to Brisbane restaurants these past few months. Brisbane has a very odd Chinatown (eg, neon lit Chinatown sign, very cliche/tacky Asian decor, etc) that is located quite near to where we’d always stay, so we figured we needed to check it out one night. Naturally, we found a Vietnamese restaurant, but it was actually some of the better Vietnamese food I’ve had in a while. Red Lotus apparently prides itself on its exceptionally large menu which was basically a book. It was difficult to decide, but the great thing about business dinners of 3+ people is you can get a whole lot of things and sample them all…
Crispy chicken spring rolls. Loved all the fresh herbs and salad accompanying them!
Awesome Vietnamese crepe. I love these and this one was delicious. It’s a very thin egg-y crepe with tofu, button mushrooms, and sprouts as a filling with a side salad. It’s a nice light dish and I just love crepes in any form.
Salt and pepper squid to up the fried contingent of our meal. The sauce was especially good
Fantastic green papaya salad with tofu. I loved the mint and the fact that it wasn’t too spicy but was still quite flavourful. (I’ve had some Thai papaya salads that have made me cry.)
Morning glory (a type of water spinach) sauteed with garlic and chilies. Love this. I adore Asian vegetables because I normally don’t cook them myself at home but just love anything stir fried in a wok that’s green.
Vegetarian rice paper rolls. I love fresh rolls but these had a bit of an odd crumbly texture on the inside. Upon later looking at the menu online I saw that it’s because they apparently put grounded rice powder in them in addition to the tofu and veggies. A bit odd. Still good but kind of surprising…
This did kind of make me long for Miss Chu’s rice paper rolls at the end (hands down the best rice paper rolls I’ve had in my life – I should probably do a post about them at some point), but overall I really liked the mix of flavours and textures, particularly with the crepe and the papaya salad. One thing I love about Vietnamese food is the preponderance of fresh greens and herbs, and this restaurant definitely had that in plenty. Not bad for a midweek jaunt in a far sleepier city than Sydney!
merrifood 