Thien Nam — Restaurant in Melbourne

We have been regular to this place for a couple of years because we felt that the food here had a degree of authenticity and uniqueness compared to the other place on Glenferrie rd. However, the recent change of management has unfortunately affected the food we loved to come to this restaurant for. Their Bun Bo Hue used to have sliced pork hock, now there is no more of those goodness. Just sliced beef, pork loaves and brisket now. The broth used to have very fragrant, distinct flavour with shrimp paste and a bit more spicy, but now there is no more shrimp paste flavour, hence made it taste just similar to a pho broth. The quality of the beef was still good, to be fair. I didn’t get to take photo of the Bun Bo Hue in our last visit as I did not think that they will loose the main star of a bun bo hue by loosing pork hock. Their deep fried pork ribs with salted egg was not bad, but the portion seemed a bit smaller than before. It was also a bit too salty for our liking. Perhaps they included the egg whites part of the salted duck egg in the sauce?🤔 Their sizzling seafood combination with black pepper sauce was not not bad in flavour, but had way more vegetables and barely seafood pieces there. We also had their broken rice with grilled pork on another occassion (not pictured). The grilled pork was nice, however the egg & pork loaf thing was more like just egg, really lacking of the pork flavour. Their beef wrapped in bethel leaves were pretty decent. We’d love to support our local go to restaurant, but it’s still sad to loose our favourite dishes that made us a regular at this place in the first place. We hope they can improve, so we would be a...

📍 Thien Nam, Hawthorn - 2.7 ⭐️ out of 5.

Venturing out from my side of the city! I enjoyed this meal but didn’t LOVE IT.

Pictured is the: ➖Lemongrass beef vermicelli bowl ➖Rice paper roll vermicelli bowl ➖Dumpling soup

Each of these dishes were $16-20.

I had the lemongrass beef vermicelli bowl and was hoping for a bit more flavour, the lemongrass was more faint than I like and the dressing was also a tad bland. Once I added some of the sauces on the table I was having a better time, but usually I don’t have to do this for a vermicelli salad. The salad itself had a lot of fresh crispy veg and the meat was cooked well, so that’s a win.

I will say that the menu here is MASSIVE and I’m sure that other dishes are better, as Jas attests to.

Overall 2.7...

Mixed feelings here. The food was tasty so that was great. However the price felt a bit steep for some things compared to other similar restaurants.

Also we had a group of 10 and found some dishes were a lot better value (a lot more meat) but other dishes like the special broken rice or the diced beef on tomato rice had very little meat (you could see through the plate).

Also this may be a personal preference thing but the 3 colour drink was made with cream and ice, and not coconut milk like normal ones so it wasn't really a drink in the end. Overall the fold tasted well though and maybe our experience was a once...