Co Thu Quan Footscray — Restaurant in Melbourne

Cô Thư Quán - Footscray VIC Canh Bun It’s a hot and humid day on the 28th of December. Most restaurants are closed for the xmas/NYE period, luckily for Mebournians we have Footscray and a host of traders who never seem to cease trading. Cô Thư Quán is one of those traders who dish up tradition central Vietnamese food with some fishy specialities. For this soup mission I opted for their speciality - The Canh Bun. This is a dish in which the chicken broth is mixed with crab paste to bring a very fishy flavour to your palette. It was different, but I definitely think for something with a huge host of ingredients there weren’t many flavours cutting through apart from the strong fish taste. The ingredients were delicious - a crab meatball that had a variety of subtle spices through it, some Vietnamese pork loaf and some very slippery thick rice noodles. The congealed porks blood was fairly stock standard, this soup probably could have done with one cube and not two. I like this restaurant because it’s authentic. They serve amazing cold vermicelli noodle dishes and a host of menu items you would not be able to find anywhere else. If you want Vietnamese food that is a bit beyond the usual pho then head along and you might find your new favourite dish. 🥢🥢🥢🥢🥢 Broth Flavour: 🍜🍜🍜.5/5 Soup ingredients: 🍜🍜🍜🍜 /5 Service: 🍜🍜🍜.5/5 Overall:...

Food is consistently excellent, cosy and warm atmosphere and great pricing. 3 stars because staff need to be more attentive to customers and must be more clean (windows were filthy and counter glass also very unclean). We began eating our food (one dish was forgotten about by the way so we cancelled it) when we noticed a seated gentleman waiting over 15 mins for a menu although there were 3 people on the floor and behind the counter, he was so patient and kind. I felt so bad for him because he came in with a bright smile. The staff did not acknowledge their lack of care nor did they apologise or offer any explanation. This honestly left a sour taste in my mouth because I could see how disconnected the staff are to customers. It's a shame and management needs to focus on better customer care and...

The Barramundi salad is a winner. The betel leaf was quite unique with the dipping sauce. Not as fragrant as some others I've had but different in a good way. The beef salad wasn't as good as previously when it had large beef slices. The beef this time was lacking in size, colour, texture and taste. I think they were trying to make up for that with more onions in the salad. Scallop egg was mushy.

Update August 2024 Barramundi salad still awesome. Mixed plate was still good. Entree has a little more sauce than normal and took away from the crispiness a little but flavours still there.

Update December 2024 Barramundi salad still super large serving and crispy. Added cut chilli for some spice and the table chilli added some saltiness...