food with the beautifood ☼: Footscray: Hao Thong

Vietnamese cuisine, a place I always love to dine at! There's never too much chicken rice in my chicken-loving world. Never!

Fairly short walk from Footscray station. I was told that this was the Melbourne-version of Sydney's Cabramatta. Sorry, but I still like Cabramatta better! :P

As you can see, Hao Thong allows BYO. Good stuff! Say hi to me in the window's reflection! o/

From the front, Hao Phong looks quite average in size, but they also have a dining area at the back. Didn't know until I asked for directions to the restrooms!

Their extensive menu offers a lot of variety and all dishes are fairly cheap, same-same prices with Sydney's Vietnamese cuisines. Around $10 for Crispy Skin Chicken & Tomato Rice and their pho dishes are around $13.

When I dine at a Vietnamese restaurant, I ALWAYS and only only eat Crispy Skin Chicken & Tomato Rice, so it's fair to say that I have a lot of crispy-chicken experiences (lol). Reason for being is because my lovely mother could pretty much cook everything else at home. I never eat pho out, and I'll tell you why soon!

Crispy Skin Chicken & Tomato Rice ($11.00)

In Cabramatta, it's Tan Viet Noodle House that has the best Crispy Skin Chicken. Hands down!

I've tried this dish at several other restaurants before, and none of them has ever been on par with Tan Viet's. So munching down this dish [on an empty] stomach was really a surprise for me! Their crispy chicken is probably the closest crispy chicken to Tan Viet's, that I've ever eaten. Beautiful crispy skin over tender, chicken meat. Urgh.. so yum!

Typical orange-coloured tomato rice that's served with these dishes, but unlike other restaurant's I've eaten at.. there's egg in this one. Might want to note that ;) Also served with a small portion of greens.

As much as I love the dish, I don't know why they are not served with dipping fish-sauce. Is it a Melbourne thing? Because mine was served with sweet chilli sauce!

In Sydney, they are always served with dipping fish sauce (nuoc mam cham/pha). The sauce that we dip banh xeo or spring rolls into...? Makes it much tastier than sweet-chilli sauce.. eehm.

My other 3 friends ordered a bowl of pho each. I won't get into too much details with the pho. I love pho, but pho at restaurants are always full of msg (bot ngot), with obvious tastes of it too (reason why I never ever eat pho at restaurants).

Hao Thong's pho bowls are not exempted from the list. I had a slight tasting of the soup, and really, all I can taste is the MSG. *shivers*

They ordered different types of pho in "small" ($9.00 each, I think), I'm not too sure which one it is in the photo above, but they said "that there was so much meat!".

Off-topic: Pretty cool that they offered pho is sizes, we don't have that in Sydney!

Overall, good customer service, affordable, nice crispy chicken rice, pho are full of msg (but lots of meat).