Hai Au Lang Nuong — Restaurant in Sydney

I love this restaurant to bits. Many who have visited Hải Âu Làng Nướng in Canley Vale will rave about how this restaurant makes you feel like you're overseas, eating in the streets of Vietnam. 100% true. Having grown up in the Canley area, Hải Âu is our community's pride and joy. Drive past on a weekend evening and you'll hear passionate karaoke, the emphatic strums of an electric guitar, and loud background Vietnamese chatter in the air. You'll smell the delightful scent of meat and shellfish cooking over charcoal.

It wasn't always like this though. Back when I was going through school, my parents would take me here to eat some simple Vietnamese classic dishes like Canh chua (sweet and sour soup, usually with fish inside) and Cá kho tộ (caremalised catfish in a hot claypot). These dishes are as nostalgic as they are representative of a homey Vietnamese home-cooked meal. At the time, this was all Hải Âu was known for.

But somewhere along the lines, they fired up a whole charcoal BBQ section and started grilling meat and seafood too. My go-to order here these days is the Bò lá lốt, beef wrapped in betel leaves, cooked over charcoal and then served with salads and vermicelli to wrap in a rice paper roll. You can then dip it into your choice of two dipping sauces, the usual bright orange Nước chấm made with fish sauce, and Mắm nêm, a purplish-grey sauce made from fermented anchovy sauce. If you haven't guessed, the latter is more pungent, though it is watered down a fair bit for the non-Vietnamese tastebuds. The smokey beef goes down a dream with the sweet pineapple and the sour dipping sauce here.

If you feel like celebrating though, the shellfish here is the way to go. On this visit, we tried the grilled blood cockles served with a tangy and lip-smacking tamarind sauce and roasted peanuts, grilled periwinkles (like seasnails) served with coconut sauce, and pippies which you can order steamed with lemongrass or BBQed as well. The dipping sauce with the pippies is a Nước chấm with an extra hit of ground lemongrass and it's an absolute ripper. Don't forget the papaya salad!

📍 Hai Au Lang Nuong, Canley...

(4.5 stars) Sydney threw a curve ball at my open-air Saigon-style dining experience at Hai Au Lang Nuong. As we arrived in Canley Vale to music blaring and shuttered windows rolled open for diners to take in the busy streetscape, a storm of epic proportions rolled in. As staff scrambled to close windows, battling damaging winds, we barely looked up from the colourful menu: utterly captivated by the array of grill-focused Vietnamese dishes on offer. We were seated in the rear of the second floor, just down from the dumbwaiter. Without being rude, staff managed to convey that tables of two are somewhat frowned upon. After struggling to narrow the ‘Chefs Special Grilled Perfection’ menu down to the number of dishes two people could reasonably consume, I could see why larger groups are the way to visit.

Starting on familiar territory, we bundled little fingers of betel leaf-wrapped lemongrass and black pepper beef—bo la lap noon than ($40)—into rice paper rolls with vermicelli noodles and a cornucopia of greens and pickled vegetables. Street-style seafood grills, like cockles sautéed with tamarind, shallots and chilli sauce then topped with peanuts—so long xao me ($40)—are so good, they’re hard to tear yourself away from. Ordering them also won us points with the floor staff, who after enquiring whether we liked them, encouraged us to stop and eat the disc of crispy crackling clay pot rice—com chay ($10)—before it got cold.

There was no such worry with the goi dua bon bon tom thit ($40), a tasty pork and prawn salad made more substantial with pickled bullbrush root. Served on rice crackers, it’s actually the tastiest version of this dish I have ever eaten. With thermoses of hot tea on each of the long tables surrounded by white plastic chairs, you don’t really need to order drinks, but the chanh day ($8) passionfruit drink is bright, fresh and acidic, a small range of mainstream beers are cold and refreshing ($7/each) and you can also BYO. Food for thought for next time—and there will be a next time—in this crazy, riotous,...

Dishonest, poor service. gross charges. I have eaten at this restaurant many times for different occasions but i recently had my birthday celebration at the restaurant organised 2 days in advanced with staff. It was terrible service- chaotic when busy, staff were under pressure, lots of staff were running around but not a single staff to look after our table of 10 + diners. Endless wait to get a staff to attend to our requests. Have eaten a few times with less diners and service was more acceptable. They advertised BYO and we brought our own alcohol and mineral water yet they still billed us $20. When questioned their response was that they are not licensed alcohol restaurant? So why bill us for bringing our own drinks? Oddly, they serve Heineken beers to other tables that requested it and billed them earnestly no doubt. I requested a jug of Soda water, the waiter understood the request but nothing happened for 40mins, when we requested again, they brought out a Coles generic bottle of soda water, no jug, no ice and again billed us $10 for the privilege. This is blatant mark up of price and poor service. The menu i placed 2 days in advanced was brought out of order all mixed up without regards. We haven't even finished the entree before they rushed out the soup which is charged at $10 per serving. The final price on soup alone was $168 for 11 serves. Knowing this was the most expensive item (yes soup), they prioritise this above my other menu items. Im still not sure how they came to that price even with GST added! Prices on average for mains are $20—45 each. Food on the whole was acceptable but service, communication, and additional hidden prices (ie BYO, soda water) as mentioned above were snicky, gross, misleading. I have eaten a lot at many Asian restaurants and generally prices are clear and transparent but Hai Au has failed on this occasion. Check with BYO charges and your receipt before paying. They have lost my patronage and trust and won't be...