Monday, May 12, 2008

Miss Saigon Vietnamese Cuisine

A new Restaurant on the island! This time it's something different, Vietnamese Cuisine. Located at E-Gate (Tesco) this restaurant is about 2 weeks old. In my first attempt to try out the place, was disappointed to find out that the place was only opened for special people who reserved the place. So the following week, to my luck, manage to slot in a fast lunch meal with my parents after making reservations. So if you are interested to try it out, best you call and make reservations.

So what did they have for lunch? Well they were basically selling their set lunch meals, so they gave us a separate menu. Note that dinner menu is the ala carte menu. Anyways, there were 10 choices to choose from their Set Lunch Menu.

Price: RM 9.80++
Vegetarian Sandwich (banana vegetarian pate)
- It has green banana pate, fresh cucumber, tomato, green salad, red cabbage, saigon chilli & salted bean sauce.

Vietnamese Baguette (pan seared chicken pate)
- basically the same ingredients as above but instead of banana pate it had chicken liver pate.

Priced 10.80++
Traditional Vietnamese Beef Noodle soup.
Traditional Vietnamese Chicken Noodle soup.

Priced 12.80++
Fragrant beef baked in bamboo cup
Shredded skinless duck breast in Vietnamese basil sauce
Deep fried soft shell crab with galangal sauce
Grilled cat fish wrapped in banana leaf

Side dishes
Hanoi Platter (RM 14.80++)
- it had various rolls such as summer roll, northern style, vegetarian roll, Hanoi roll, Vietnamese bean curd roll & Vietnamese salad.

Miss Saigon Platter (RM 24.80++)
Prawn Paste on sugar cane, seafood roll, summer roll northern style, Vietnamese southern fish roll & Vietnamese Salad.

***Set lunch includes beverage with choice of instant Vietnamese coffee or Vietnamese Lemongrass tea. I did not like the lemon grass tea. Lemon grass taste was so strong, that it was weird to drink it down my throat.

Below is the grilled cat fish wrapped in banana leaf. Fish slices were pretty good tasting, but kinda miserable in size. This is certainly not good for heavy eaters. The dish is served with garlic brown rice, broccoli and sweet pumpkin and not forgetting a salad-like-salad which I did not quite like. It had a bitter taste.


Grilled cat fish wrapped in banana leaf. Price 12.80++


Deep fried soft shell crab with galangal sauce was good. Crispy on the outside and that special galangal sauce was excellent. Wish they served more. This was also served with garlic brown rice, broccoli and sweet pumpkin and not forgetting a salad-like-salad

Deep fried soft shell crab with galangal sauce. Price 12.80++


Now about the rolls. We tried out 2 types. First was the Miss Saigon Platter. It had 6 rolls and 2 of the Prawn Paste on sugar cane. Rolls were suppose to be seafood roll, summer roll northern style, Vietnamese southern fish roll. However I couldn't tell which was which and just tried all 3. Well since I am new with this Vietnamese Rolls, Didn't really quite enjoy it as it was rather tasteless for me and full of vegetables in it. But I guess that is how these rolls are suppose to be. The Prawn Paste on sugar cane, well it tasted good. However instead of sugar cane, it was lemon grass. The minced prawn meat was marinated and and then wrapped round the lemon grass and BBQ-ed. So when you bite on this, it had a strong lemon grass taste. Good idea to make this for my next BBQ session.

Miss Saigon Platter. Price RM 24.80++

Prawn Paste on Sugar Cane

Then the Hanoi Platter. It had various rolls such as summer roll northern style, vegetarian roll, Hanoi roll and Vietnamese bean curd roll. Before I forget, each Roll platter has a Vietnamese Salad in the middle, which tasted and looked like pineapples and apples topped with groundnuts and mixed with a special sour sauce. It was good. Each platter was also served with a sauce which tasted just like the Thai Chilli sauce. If I am right, you are suppose to dip your rolls in this sauce.

Hanoi Platter. Price RM 14.80++

For what we ordered the bill came up to RM 74. Found it a bit pricey for the amount of food we had. For this amount spent at a chu char place, would have gotten much better dishes full of meat. But anyways it was a good experience for me and I must say I will be coming back to try out other dishes, but not the rolls.

4 comments:

Joze Foo said...

Hi Cheryl....

It's Siew Lee here.....I see nice food here but heard that its under renovation cos the kitchen was burned..

Edzil and Cheryl said...

Hey Siew Lee,
No wonder I've been passing by the place and its been close.

Nami said...

yeah cher, i tried to go with ian but its closed for renovation. but a bit pretentious isn't it to serve customers who ONLY make reservations? esp for a new restaurant. hmmm...

Anonymous said...

hi, drop by to read on Ms Saigon and wanted to know more about how others think about them,

we did blog with negative feedback to them and seems like more and more ppl are at the same side.

Hope will get them improve as viet food is kind of rare at Penang Island.