My Canh Restaurant — Restaurant in Sydney

Bankstown blitz, My Canh Vietnamese Extravaganza

My quest for the ultimate broaster chicken somehow led to stumbling upon this gem. For an entrée I slammed down a beef sharwarma and twice-cooked lamb brains, for tonight will be defined by rampage eating.

That being said, I wasn't that hungry, so I ordered a couple of dishes to degustate, a taste-test as it were.

Snow pea sprouts with preserved beancurd. These weren't exactly stir-fried. I was hoping for a hot kiss from the wok. Still tasty in an odd way, odd because I seem to be waxing lyrical about vegetables. Oyster sauce, sugar, fish sauce were the main flavours behind this dish. Diabolical.

Crispy skin chicken. Lightly blanched then hung to dry, these Maryland pieces were fried to crispy perfection. Exactly what I anticipated. Pure protein goodness.

Salt & Pepper Squid. Served with a vinegar dip, these tasty morsels were very lightly battered. To the point of low carb. Very well done. Excellent beer food, what, with garlic, salt and chili highlights.

Salt & Pepper Pork. Strips of pork battered then wok tossed in aromatics. Five spice, sugar, ginger. Key thing was a different batter was used here than the squid. Not just because coating dynamics differ between the substrate squid that is hydrophobic vs pork that is hydrophilic, but understanding that ginger enhances pork, whilst garlic enhances squid tells me that the chef appreciates the subtleties of flavour country.

Butterflied prawn in butter. Some description like that. This turned out to be a homemade cutlet of prawns. Imagine biting into a huge shrimp wanton that was stuffed with more shrimp wontons. Or having a large cake from whence jumps out a smaller cake. Pleasantly surprising in a surprisingly pleasant way.

I quite enjoyed this impromptu Vietnamese meal. It brought me back to Vietnam, closed my eyes I did.

Why? Extensive menu, with offerings hardfound elsewhere. I will be back for seafood and traditional Vietnamese steamboat.

Why not? Dunno. How can you not like Vietnamese cuisine? You don't? Go to hell already, go on, git!

#mycanh #bankstownfood...

After a visit to the NSW Health vaccination centre at Olympic Park, I decided to take the train to meet my dining companion in Bankstown. Wandering the streets near the station smelling a multicultural melange of options, we settled on an impromptu Vietnamese dinner. My Canh cuts a nice architectural silhouette against the darkening twilight sky. Inside the large fluoro-lit restaurant is an institutional cream with blue highlights, brightened up with menu photos and fake plants. If the number of photos ringing the room don’t already give it away, My Canh has a massive menu. With nutty hot green tea served without question, we settled in for a long read.

The seafood spring roll ($7) we opt to share is a crisp dome of blistered pastry wrapped around a surprisingly big ball of mixed seafood. Dragged through mayonnaise, it’s quite delicious. With beef such a feature of Vietnamese menus, it’s hard to make choice, but the cold night eventually made a sizzling platter of Mongolian beef ($25) seem the most attractive. It’s a distinctly Vietnamese take on a Chinese dish, with thin slices of beef that taste of lemongrass cut by juicy brown onion and crisp snow peas. We eat it with fried rice ($12)—served on the loudest plate I’ve ever encountered in a restaurant—studded with its own riot of colourful additions: peas, carrots, corn kernels, prawns and red pork.

Fermented bean curd isn’t the prettiest topping for a plate of stir-fried morning glory ($12), but it is a way to make eating a lot of greens particularly attractive. My chopsticks alternate between it and tasty (market-price) pipis in syrupy XO sauce ($42). While they did feel slightly pricy, the freshness and quality of the clams was unmistakable and I really enjoyed this dish. Tall glasses of fresh lemon juice ($4.50) helped this impromptu meal (in an unlicensed restaurant) feel healthy and complete. If I found myself in Bankstown again, I’d return to explore this...

A little gem of a Vietnamese restaurant and one of my all time favourites. A somewhat austere exterior/interior belies the characterful, delicious, authentic Vietnamese food on offer. Over the many years I’ve been frequenting the restaurant (travelling in from the inner city and north shore) the service has been courteous and efficient and food (all the old faves) reliable and delicious - mostly hits although a couple misses - and always reasonably priced. I expect My Canh is often overlooked for its more famous neighbour (An restaurant), which is a shame - the pho at My Canh is just as good but not as outrageously priced - however on a purely selfish level happy that I can get a seat without queuing and can get instant satisfaction from the efficient service and on point...