Hô NAI Vietnamese Kitchen — Restaurant in Clare

we stopped here for lunch on our way south to Adelaide and wanted to try this. We ordered tofu noodle bowl and spring roll noodle bowl but after ordering the woman at the cashier (can't call her waitress as she did not wait on us) told us they were out of rice noodles....(ie the type of thin rice noodle you buy at Foodland next door and cook up in 2 min).ummm?

So I changed mine to a tofu salad and my husband had springroll on fried rice.

This place was one of the poorer food experience in South Australia for the following reasons:

A) food was not authentic. No herbs not even coriander added to the salad The fried rice was abysmal and not too different from what you get from heating uncle Ben's. Dry, flavourless and dotted with frozen vegetables that were hard to chew B) my meagre tofu salad was still $16 which was extremely overpriced even when it was supposed to have noodles in it. C) everything served in takeaway containers even when eating in.

Really really ordinary food and my only recommendations for this place is not to waste your time or money there. Its not real Vietnamese food because it's so...

Tucked away from the hustle and bustle (because, let’s be honest, Clare’s "bustle" is about three tractors and a ute), there's a little treasure known only to the locals—Ho NAI Vietnamese Kitchen. It’s the kind of place where everyone walks in to a chorus of first-name greetings, except, of course, for you, the obvious outsider.

Naturally, we went straight for the Banh Mi, because why pretend to be adventurous? The staff, with a knowing grin, decided we weren’t built for the chilli. "No chilli, too hot for you." Wow. Read me like a book, didn’t they? Maybe it was the Melbourne glare in my eyes, or perhaps they just didn’t feel like calling an ambulance. Either way, we survived—albeit mildly under-spiced.

But honestly, between the country-style hospitality (charmingly blunt) and the Vietnamese warmth (literal and figurative), the place is worth a stop—especially if you’re just passing through and need to be gently reminded that you're not quite as tough as you...

I recently had the banh mi. It's not authentic. No banh mi in Vietnam is ever served with (actually, drowned in) mayonnaise. And where are the pickled vegetables? Shredded raw carrot and giant wedges of cucumber don't cut it. Also, the baguette is not made from rice flour, so it's not the same as one would get on the streets in Vietnam. For $9, I expected a lot better and...