Vinh Vinh

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Vinh Vinh is located on the bustling Victoria Street serving, of course, Vietnamese food. Their lunch menu has a good selection of dishes for a decent price. It doesn’t appear to be a very popular restaurant, but it does have a spacious dining area.

The people are mostly friendly, and service is quite good. I was actually surprised at how fast my order came since I just checked my phone for a few minutes and there it was!

I believe their lunch menu is around $8, but don’t take my word for it, and it comes with complementary soup to boot.

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I ordered the Crispy Chicken with Rice dish, usually when I go to Walrus in Springvale or really many other Vietnamese restaurants, they offer Tomato Rice with their Crispy Chicken. I don’t believe they do offer a Tomato Rice version, but they should.

I found their chicken to be overly dry, but crispy so I guess that’s a plus. So it definitely needed the sweet chilli sauce or to eat the chicken and rice with the soup to keep everything slightly moist.

The chicken had nice flavour but since it was overcooked, any positives were offset by the centrepiece of the dish.

The vegetables were more than acceptable, and added the fresh component to the dish which was welcoming and the complementary soup also had nice bold flavours to it. The soup with that sprinkling of spring onion, yep, that’s the good stuff.

Overall my dining experience was acceptable. I possibly could have chosen the bad dish or it was an off day, but for me, that one experience wasn’t a particular positive one. Would I go there again? Yes. Just to try their other dishes out even though this one wasn’t too good. If I was served something like this again,  there are plenty of other eateries to try instead.

Vinh Vinh on Urbanspoon

Vinh Vinh

387 Victoria St
Richmond VIC 3121

I Love Pho 264

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I Love Pho is located in the heart of the Richmond-Vietnamese community. On Victoria St, I Love Pho is a popular destination to order some delicious Pho. It appears it only does indeed serve Pho, but please correct me if I’m wrong.

At I Love Pho, there are many different types of ingredients you can add to your Pho. I ordered the Chicken and Beef Combination, but you can order tofu and vegies, a special beef combination with extras or simply just beef or chicken. All for a considerably decent price range. You can check out the menu here

During lunch hours, the service appears average at best, though, it depends on how you look at it. You order and get served very quickly, but it’s mostly a rushed environment to get as many people in and out as they can.

Onto the Pho that I did try, the beef was quite nice and seasoned and still slightly rare which makes it all the better, as the very popular restaurant in Springvale well known for their Pho has chewy and tough beef. The chicken was also soft and moist and not dry at all so it was a pleasant surprise.

The soup is what I guess most people enjoy, and I Love Pho’s soup is very good. It has a great flavour to it, but it isn’t too strong. For some it may be slightly ‘watery’ but I enjoyed it and after finishing my Pho (almost finishing anyway), I was extremely full and satisfied.

I Love Pho knows what it does best, it hardly needs to change a thing as people arrive in droves. You can see why it is so popular on Victoria St, and a favourite of many as well.

I Love Pho 264 on Urbanspoon

I Love Pho

264 Victoria St
Richmond, VIC 3121

(03) 9427 7749