Minh Minh, Richmond
Dave, his sister Eliza and I came here for dinner on a Wednesday night and it was packed. I took that to be a good sign- I mean, a restaurant must be pretty good if it fills up on a week night, right?
So wrong. One look at the menu says it all. Black pepper <insert meat>, Mongolian beef, <insert meat> with cashews, <insert meat> with lemongrass, I could keep going. At the time I was thinking “but… the sign outside said Thai, Vietnamese and Lao food”. I can understand a Chinese restaurant trying to get away with random anglo-morph Chinese dishes, but then why claim to be a <insert more exotic ethnicity> restaurant? To be fair (and maybe slightly racist) they seemed to have a pretty white-dominant clientele who were pretty happy with their lemon chicken.
Okay, I am exaggerating slightly and perhaps being a bit mean. But as one of the few Asian people in the restaurant that night, I was looking around trying to find someone else who was equally perplexed. It wasn’t completely false advertising, as they did have one column of the menu dedicated to the “Lao, Thai and Vietnamese food” which to my memory consisted of some Thai curries and a few Lao dishes. Entrees featured a number of Vietnamese eats too, which a lot of people seemed to be enjoying.
We ordered a seafood Tom Yum, but nothing else from that part of the menu as Liza wasn’t a fan of spicy food. Some of the specials did sound pretty authentic, but the dish we ordered off the specials board (satay beef) was just battered and deep fried beef in a very mild peanut sauce. The other things we ordered were vegetables with cashews and pork in Peking sauce. Both were tasty and were served pretty quickly, but were by no means authentic. The pork was also battered and deep fried, and came in a pink and sweet plummy sauce. How bizarre.
Also, the waiters seemed a little bit agro, but that’s probably due to how busy they were. Right now I’m just trying to get over the menu and work out why it’s such a popular restaurant. Perhaps if I had ordered from the ‘Asian’ menu I would have enjoyed the food more? I’m not writing it off completely since what we ordered wasn’t all that representative of the overall offering.
Six pages of Google search later, I actually managed to find a review from Melbourne’s bargain foodie- it’s a positive one too, which reinforces my view that Minh Minh’s popularity could be justified. Still, if it’s so wildly popular thanks to the authentic dishes, is it really necessary to pad out the menu with generic fake-Chinese dishes? Just gets me down. If you’ve had a positive/negative experience here, I’d love to hear about it.
Minh Minh
94 Victoria St
Richmond, 3121
