Tien Dat

Tien Dat

3 Carrington Rd, Box Hill

(Ph) 9890 9699

Catching up with T and R =) I'm not usually a fan of Vietnamese food but P loves it so T suggested Tien Dat, apparently one of the best Vietnamese restaurants in Melbourne. Cheap Eats Guide gave it a rating of ☆☆☆! They are fully booked, especially on weekends, and do 2 seatings. We were seated at 6.15pm and were told we had to leave by 8.15pm - fair enough.

We started off with Tien Dat Spring Rolls - Regular (pork, shrimp, vegetables & mushrooms). Large serve 5 rolls (lettuce, herbs, vermicelli noodles & sauce) $11.45

Nothing too special, like any normal spring rolls so thought it was a bit on the expensive side. I like how Vietnamese style like to serve it with lettuce and vermicelli - makes spring rolls seem less unhealthy right? Their fish sauce is one of the best I've had though.

Next came the Steam Pancake Rolls (Banh Cuon). We got half serve pork (pork, mushroom & onion) and half serve prawns (prawns & onion)

It's like the Chinese steamed rice noodles except these are drier and served with fish sauce instead. The rice noodles were quite smooth and I like how it's served with garlic chips and bean shoots.

My favourite Vietnamese dish! Vietnamese Crepe (Banh Xeo) - pork, prawns, mung beans, bean shoots and served with lettuce , herbs & sauce $16.30

This was done very well - thin crispy omelette with lots of fillings, the mung bean paste is an interesting filling which went very well with the rest and actually acted like a glue so the stuff didn't all fall out! =P

Next came the Rice Vermicelli (Bun) - served with shredded lettuce, herbs, crushed peanuts and sauce. With grilled Lemongrass Pork $11.30

T mixed it up before I had a chance to photograph it =P Very refreshing dish and was delicious with the fish sauce, but after having fish sauce on every single dish kinda get a bit sick of the flavour =P The grilled lemongrass pork was done really well - one of the highlights of the meal =)

We were getting full already but still had 2 more dishes to come! We totally overordered but anyway =P Spicy Squid (salted & peppered squid) - squid lightly deep-fried, tossed with spices, onions and chilli. Served on a garden salad $17.80

Deep fried squid with some onions and capsicum. This is more like a Chinese dish than Vietnamese if you take the fish sauce out of it.

Last came the Sizzling Dish. Choice of Lemongrass & chilli, sate, hot or sweet chilli with fresh basil, mongolian, mild curry lemongrass & coconut cream, garlic and ginger, black bean or black pepper corn. We decided to go with the Lemongrass with beef $16.30

This was quite ordinary - I couldn't really taste the lemongrass, and I thought usually lemongrass is dry like the lemongrass pork? Was alright, more like a stir fry dish instead of actually cooked on the sizzling plate.

It was 8.05pm by the time we finished our mains and T said they had a really good dessert she wanted us to try (even though we were stuffed!) but the waitress said we had to be out of the restaurant and wouldn't let us order even though we still had 10mins to go. Apparently we were meant to be out by 8pm not 8.15pm, we pleaded her and said the group wasn't even here yet but she just said no =/

Food~
7/10 - was not too bad, my favourite was the Vietnamese Pancake =) Lemongrass pork is also good, the rest were quite ordinary or was more Chinese than Vietnamese.

Atmosphere~
2/5 - quite loud given it was fully packed

Service~
1/5 - food came quite quickly but I didn't like how they made a mistake with the leaving time and wasn't nice about it =/

C.
xo