My's at Weston 10 February 2016

My’s restaurant in Weston is a popular local Vietnamese restaurant particularly among large family groups. It therefore tends to be quite busy early in the evening but quietens down later on.  However even when crowded, the restaurant has a nice family friendly feel and the service and ambiance is very good.

Only a small group of us were in town for our fortnightly dinner so we had to wonder whether it was luck or design that Jim brought along a particularly good bottle of wine to share.  As we sipped this delightful tipple, we may have got a little carried away with ordering and so the night ended up being much more expensive than usual ($40 per head) and not particularly good value for money.   

For 4 people, we ordered 1 entrée (prawn and zucchini fritters), 4 mains (Banana blossom salad with crispy pork belly and Prawns, Twice cooked boneless Duck in Plum sauce, Rock salt soft shell crab, Barramundi with green apple salad) and a dessert each (coconut rice cream with brandy). 

The entrée (prawn and zucchini fritter) was a bit surprising.  Rather than a fritter, it was a whole prawn wrapped in grated zucchini and then deep fried and served with a sweet fish sauce.  It looked interesting but the elements of the dish were all separate and there was no real combination of flavours.  The result was OK without being great. 

Also, unfortunately for us, along with a deep fried entrée, all of our main courses had an element which was either fatty or deep fried.  That meant that while each dish was individually good, the combination was a little too heavy (our fault rather than the restaurant’s!)

Of the main dishes, the duck was particularly popular. Perhaps it was the effect of Jim’s wine but we found that the more we ate the dish the more we liked it.   The duck was beautifully cooked with perfectly crisp skin. The very sweet plum sauce was perhaps was too sticky so didn’t seem to coat the duck effectively and there needed to be more crispy noodles.  However, true to form, our duck lovers (Jim and Ron) thought the dish was fantastic and rated it very highly bumping it up to number 1 in the rankings!

The other main dishes were also good.  The banana blossom dish was the most unusual dish of the night.  The shredded banana blossom added a nice texture to the dish and was a good contrast to the crispy pork. Unfortunately not all the pieces of pork were crispy and this let down the dish a little.  We also had mixed views on whether the prawns were necessary.  The textures should have worked well with the other ingredients but strangely didn’t – perhaps the prawns should have been kept whole rather than halved.