Green Bamboo — Restaurant in Melbourne

My wife and I visited the Green Bamboo with 2 friends for dinner on a Thursday night and I wish that we hadn't. All of us had dined there before and all of us wished that we had left it at that and not returned.

The restaurant which is quite spacious was near empty but for 2 other tables. But despite this the 2 waiters did not attend on us and had to be called to take our order after we had been seated for about 15 minutes.

The young male waiter was totally out of his depth, did not have a clue about any of the dishes and had to keep going to the kitchen to get answers to some basic questions about the dishes.

Interestingly when asked if we could have a meal without MSG, the waiter checked and was honest enough to inform us that all the food did have MSG.

For entree we ordered: The Satay Chicken & Spring Rolls. The Satay Chicken did not look nor taste anything like Asian Satay. They were thick pieces or chunks of chicken with pieces of vegetable in a short skewer - like at a home barbecue. There was no proper satay sauce and the chicken was not well grilled and cost $9 for a plate of 3 skewers. I'd score it ( 2 out of 10) The vegetable fried spring rolls were tasty but served with a very small side of lettuce and 1 sprig of herbs. ( 6 out of 10)

For mains we ordered: -Battered Chicken - Run of the mill battered fried chicken pieces in sweet lemon sauce. I've tasted better at most food courts.(3 out of 10) -Stir Fried vegetable with chilli; No taste. No chilli It was insipid. (2 out of 10) -Singapore Fried Noodles: which was quite tasty but with hardly any meat. Still, it was the only meal that we all enjoyed. (7 out of 10) & finally 2 serves of -Special Combination Fried Rice. This was the most disappointing dish of all. To me Fried Rice is an indicator of the quality of a Asian restaurant. This was not fried rice - it was over-boiled rice with bits of carrot on it. There was no taste of egg and it reminded me of take-away fried rice from the 80s.

Perhaps they were having a bad night, perhaps the owners were not in attendance but I did hear my friends inform me that they would not be returning to the Green Bamboo....

Bland food and overpriced. Came here for dinner and regretted not choosing one of the various other nearby restaurants. Should have know something was wrong when half the restaurant and customers were hidden in the dark and the others in a well lit area.

They forgot to enter one of our parties order into the system. She ordered the special and the waiter was even asked whether the pork was the crispy roast one or the soft bbq one and he even took ages writing the order on his pad but then seconds later "forgot" to enter it into the system? When we finally discovered this error we were told he forgot and he was new (just a few WEEKS on the job not days) and that new employees hard to find. No apology just a nervous grin and that the order will now be entered, naturally we declined.

Now onto the food the chinese broccoli overpriced at close to $20 was tasteless. It tasted like just steamed green without much flavour coming from the minimal sauce.

The spring rolls came out in two parts the lettuce and saice came out before the meal but the actual spring rolls came halfway through the meal long after the mains were served.

The garlic beef had mainly onions and carrots with minimal greens (lucky i had ordered the bland broccoli) and tasted soggy with hardly any garlic used.

Finally the fried wontons tasted worse than your frozon wontons that you can get from you local...

I was a little bit apprehensive as I was the only Asian … in a Vietnamese Chinese restaurant 😂 the old stereotype that if it’s not filled with local Asians then it’s probably not going to be good didn’t really apply here though!

One pet peeve of mine was that the Vietnamese staff there looked at me like I was an alien after I asked if they had a specific Vietnamese noodle dish… in viet. They looked at me like I was the strangest.

It was as if they catered to purely non Asians there and were trying to westernise themselves.

They also pronounced “pho” as FO. So disappointed at this, as they were definitely Vietnamese and you would assume that if you offered pho in the menu then you could pronounce it.

The food itself was surprisingly quite authentic and tasty. We ordered “FO” and vermicelli noodles as well as spring rolls. Spring rolls were 10/10 and were definitely home made. However, very little lettuce was provided. He did however really provide more when I asked which was so lovely.

This wouldn’t be my go to Vietnamese Chinese restaurant but for the area / location and the availability it exceeded my food...