noodleoodle

Song Huong - 71 Alfrieda Street St Albans (03) 9356 0567

I though I may have been dreaming about St Albans. So I enlisted some noodle hunters to trek out there, and confirm it actually exists. Toby, Asha, E and I, loaded up the car and headed off. Much to my delight, it wasn’t a dream.

We had a bowl of soup and some spring rolls at Song Huong. Toby and I both had Bun Bo Hue which included a great knuckle of pork bone. The quality was equal to Duan Com Viet Nam, which is just next door.

We left for a walk around town, further along are two more noodle shops in construction. It just gets better. I feel safe in the knowledge that I wont run out of noodle shops to visit in the near future. Toby and I thought we might go and check out Sunshine next.

Duan Com Viet Nam - 69 Alfrieda Street St Albans 3021

• 11:48 Departed - Drove north along The Chandler.
• 12:12 Arrived - Alfrieda Street, St Albans.
• 12:18 Duan Com Viet Nam - Cafe run by a couple from Central Vietnam. Bun Bo Hue is the specialty, there’s a large range of drinks. I couldn’t go past Bun Bo Hue, it came in small/medium/SPECIAL/xl. I asked what was in the SPECIAL? I was told it was “better than normal.” I had to have it!
• 12:20 Ordered Bun Bo Hue - Fully expecting stomach bits.
• 12:25 Soup Arrived - It had a beautiful citrus fragrance, and was accompanied by a lovely plate of shredded lettuce and herbs mixed together. To my surprise no offal, only large chunks of braised pork and beef… and some processed cakes of untraceable animal origin.
• 12.40 Soup finished - I see others drinking Vietnamese style coffee with condensed milk.
• 12.41 Coffee Ordered - I’m a big fan of this style of coffee. To often people compare it to the type of coffee we drink in Melbourne. I don’t think it’s a fair comparison. It’s a totally different thing, and I could think of nothing worse than having a cafe latte after the meal I’d just had. Somehow though this coffee works and I enjoyed watching it drip slowly into the glass. I stirred it and drank the sweet dark liquid. Haven’t seen it anywhere else in Melbourne.
• 12.53 Paid, left, departed
• 13.24 Arrived home - Resumed work.

That’s right! were in the process of compiling the first noodloodle illustrated. These will hopefully be available to Australian subscribers of our rss feed soon. If you’re interested in having one of these sent your way let us know.

Co Do - (03) 9421 2418 - 196 Victoria Street Richmond

Co Do is my new favorite place on Victoria Street. After missing my opportunity to have Bun Mam in St Albans the other day, I was determined to discover it when I was down on Victoria street recently. I found it in Co Do’s menu and stepped inside. The waiter made the point twice, that Bun Mam is very smelly. Well, what do you expect from a brew made of preserved salted fish.

It really was yummy, fishy and pungent! Rice noodles in a bowl of steamy, fishy, pungentness. I loaded it up with lettuce, bean sprouts and chilli. Floating in the broth was heap of sliced pork, some fish, squid, and a prawn.

The noodles were similar to that of Bun Bo Hue. When I paid, the owner told me that his family was from Hue. Oh regrets, again. I should have had there chili beef noodle soup. I’m going to start to have 2 bowls of soup per meal.

Cafe Hien Nhi - (03) 9310 9151 - shop 3, 47 Alfrieda Street St Albans 3021

I got totally lost on the way out there, but on the trip home I realised that it’s not all that far away. As my mission statement is to “search for great and surprising food under my nose”, I was very happy with my trip to St Albans. I’d never given the place a second thought. The end of a train line, nothing else.

What I discovered was a pleasant little shopping area with a distinctly Vietnamese flavour. Bakeries, hair dressing salons and real estate agents compete for attention with Vietnamese and Chinese signage. Numerous Asian grocery stores sell fresh noodles, vegetables and you name it. There are a number of Viet/Chinese restaurants, but what got me impressed was the concentration of dedicated soup shops. There is a strip of three that have seating on the street. Bun Bo Hue is advatised a lot.

The Restaurant that I had a quick bowl of soup at was called Hien Nhi. It was in a little lane way off Alfrieda Street. It was a pretty random choice. I liked the atmosphere of all the lads lazing at the tables on the footpath out front, cigarettes and hot tea flowing.

I ordered Hu Tieu, a noodle soup with pork broth. It was lovely, the broth was strong and aromatic, accompanied by thinly slice rare meat, lettuce, crunchy pork croutons, and spring onions. It wasn’t until after I’d throughly enjoyed this bowl of noodles that I realised that the house specialty was Bun Mam (noodle soup made from dried fish), maybe I should have ordered this…argh regrets…

Pho Hoang Noodle House - (03) 9558 4064 - 36 Buckingham Ave Springvale 3171

Springvale Road is the worst Road to drive, anywhere in the world. I think you’ll agree. No matter what time of day your driving, the experience is always the same, pure hell! Today was no different. At least we had a reward at the end of the line.

Behind the low lying shops on Springvale Road, Springvale, is a maze of back streets and under cover malls. Inhabiting this are dozens of eateries and food vendors. Thai, Cambodian, Chinese, and Vietnamese. I lost count but there are at least six Pho shops with in a block of each other. King Whale Seafood Restaurant looms large over the district, in all it’s canary-yellow-double-story-car-park splendor. King Whale is penciled in for another time.

We tried Pho Hoang. This is a small, mirror walled, very worn tabled establishment, with a steady stream of soup punters. (I don’t think they get many tourists like us out here.) They do soup and only soup, but with many variations. Bun Bo Hue was on the list, as was Bo kho. There was also a Cambodian soup.

The quality was good with flavorsome stocks, fine noodles, ample accompaniments and the largest plate of salad stuffs I’ve seen anywhere.

It was well worth the battle of Springvale Road. We’ll be back.

Happy birthday Asha! (fellow noodle hunter)

This place is like home. The specialty is dumplings, either Pork or beef, (they have started to do vego ones due to lobby group pressure, can’t be a good thing). My favorite is the dumplings in soup with chili oil. These little buggers are fat and plump with a wonderful hand rolled doughy encasement. The filling is soft and tender minced pork that is poached briefly in some furiously steaming contraption. The soup is subtle and soothing but abruptly injected with some fiery chili oil.

The order of things goes like this: Get directed to very worn laminex table, order dumplings, retrieve small bowl of soya sause with chopped chili (they never top the chili up enough), get plastic cup of tea, wait less than one minute, eat over a dozen magnificent dumplings, pay, leave, repeat.

Dumplings in soup with chili oil cost $5.80. Can you believe that? They do have numerous noodle dishes here but I’m so entrenched in my ways I haven’t had one.

Shanghai Dumpling Restaurant - (03) 9663 8555 - 23 Tattersalls Lane Melbourne 3000

Happy Birthday Cal!

Ramen takes the noodle soup to extremes. There are some people out there that are crazy about this stuff. I’d agree that it’s something you could get fanatical about. I’ve decided to include a bit of Ramen in noodleoodle. I visited Ajisen Ramen. This place looked a little swanky but also sported a fair degree of cheapness that made me feel at home. It has a decent selection of Ramen as well as heaps of other stuff. Not quite sure abot the “Aussie outback Ramen”, I think this is a hybrid we don’t need! It includes bacon, sausages that look like Frankforts and a pineapple slice, shudder…

I had Chasyu Ramen, and it came in a big hot solid bowl. The noodles were a thin round egg, kinda like little spaghetti. It was topped with heaps of dry fried spring onion and some seaweedy stuff. The pork was lovely, with a great combination of soft fat textures and roasted stringy meat rolled and sliced thinly. There were condiments available, ground chili, ground dried onion, white pepper, chili oil, and Japanese Soy. The first of many Ramens for noodleoodle, I hope.

My Ramen cost $9, they serve Asahi and Sapporo here.

Ajisen Ramen - (03) 9662 1100 - 130 Bourke St Melbourne 3000

I’m a bit puzzled as to why on earth they would want to have a bowl of noodles with a question mark rising from it, as their logo.