Rocs and Rolls Restaurant — Restaurant in Sydney

Fabulous food, sincere, hard-working staff, painful wait times.

We have come here twice. The first experience was sensational. So we decided to bring our parents to show off this place. This second time around, we were painfully let down by unreasonable wait times.

Our advice to save you the heartache of 40 minute wait times is to come with a small group (no more than 5 ppl) near closing time (9pm). Our first time visiting, it was just my partner and I and we arrived at 8:45pm. Many of the patrons were finishing up. That day our order came out within 15 minutes and all dishes came out together.

Contrast to our 2nd time, we called to book for 4 people. We arrived and had to wait 15 minutes to get a seat and after placing our orders, endured a 40 minute wait before the first dish arrived... The subsequent dishes slowly and painfully trickled in one by one after that.

Mind you the food is out-of-this-world good. My partner and I go wild for seashells everytime we're in Asia so to find a place that specialises in it here in Sydney is a heaven-send.

The staff are lovely, hard-working and sincere. It's just unfortunate that the way the operations are run cause lengthy wait times.

My suggestion: fewer tables inside and hence being able to better serve seated customers a queue for those interested enough to wait for a table to free up.

I can handle a place being too busy and hence knowing I need to go somewhere else... however I find it a tougher pill to swallow when I've been shown to a table, have ordered and paid and not see any food for close to an hour. The venue would have fewer bad reviews this...

THIS IS CASH ONLY. The place only accepts cash, the dishes are about 35~ each if you're not ordering any MP seafood. The restaurant is inside the pub, has its own entrance facing the main road. It is NOT a romantic date spot so be warned. Also the place does not serve table water, and the bar next door is where you fetch it from, but they close super early it seems? We were there around 6:30pm and the bar was closed so you need to go to the other bar, deeper inside the pub for any refreshments.

The food is delicious, snails are great, we wanted to try all the snail options but not all snails on menu are available every night. The ladies were helpful at the counter but they did try to oversell us on food, it is order and pay at counter before you bring a little tray back and forth to shuttle your own plates. You should keep a menu and order more later if you're still hungry, the food wait time is not long.

This is not a romantic place because the menu is fairly specialized, there are not a lot of your usual options to choose from so hope your date likes to try things. For some reason they decided to serve one dish on a ceramic plate and the rest on paper plates. The restaurant was fairly empty at the time (one other table) so not sure why this was the case. The tables and chairs are also these mismatched yellow plastic colors, inconsistent with the pub carpet. Normal for a pub I suppose, but not pleasant to the eyes. Definitely a place to try, bring your family with kids or friends...

TL; DR: Good place to eat “ốc” (Viet style sea snails and shellfish in various sauces) and other street foods. Staff are very nice but there can be a wait.

Enjoyed the ốc here especially the razor clams in sate sauce and the lemongrass steamed clams. Grilled chicken feet and ox tongue are also yummy.

The sauces are generally quite tasty although some eat a little sweet. Unfortunately they aren’t allowed to serve bread to mop it all up but my tip is to order some bánh đa (crispy rice cracker) for dipping and crunch.

Ordering and service can be a bit slow especially when busy but the ladies at the counter are very nice. They take the time to help you order which is why it takes a little longer. It helps if you speak Vietnamese but there are pictures of the food on the menu if you don’t.

Have visited twice and both times were a decent meal. The second time, the flavours didn’t seem as punchy and the XO vermicelli dish shrank a bit but I’d still eat here again.

The location is very casual being located inside a pub. Sometimes the smoke smell wafts into the dining room so that was a tad off putting. You’re not here for the atmosphere though. Plenty of big tables for families and groups and the dining room is spacious. Best...