The Hanoi Shuffle — Restaurant in Sydney

Located on the main strip of Darling Street. This charming Vietnamese restaurant has playful twists on traditional Vietnamese fare.

Service is lovely and accommodating. Nothing too much and happy to answer any questions you may have.

The food is designed to be shared and no chance of fomo. The cocktails are interesting and well worth trying. Tried Dragonfruit Smash and Ky Dieu. If you’re game they even have one called Photini which actually has vegan pho as an ingredient!

We started off with a bunch of entrees including the special of Chicken Wings. Tasty bites and very moreish. Salmon Parcel With Asian Herbs. This was yummy and full of chunks of salmon. Served with a garlic soy sauce. Hanoi Pork Spring Rolls were crunchy and filled with your usual filling of pork and vegetables. It came with an accompaniment of sweet chilli sauce.

The highlight of the dinner was definitely the Hanoi Style Grilled Barramundi. A sizzling plate packed filled of pieces of tender fish coated in a fantastic turmeric and dill mix. It was so yummy and definitely unexpected as don’t usually go for a fish dish but can highly recommend this as it will be a crowd pleaser. The Vietnamese Open Pancake (or Banh Xeo) we had was topped with pork and prawn as well as fresh herbs and bean sprouts. The pancake was crisp and tasted wonderful. A good combination of textures and flavours. The dish I was looking forward to was the Twice Cooked Pork Belly. Tender pork belly with crisp crackling will get your tastebuds going. Served with an egg and bun, it was delicious.

Finished off with Black Sticky Rice Pudding with Black Sesame Gelato (from Mapo so high quality) and it was my favourite dessert. It had a nice bite of the rice and the creamy gelato. The other one we tried was the Lemongrass Creme Brûlée. It had a nice perfume of lemongrass with a nice crack of the brûlée.

A great restaurant which I’m sure will be a nice neighbourhood favourite whether you want a quick bite to eat, some cocktails to begin the night, or a feast to share. They also offer cocktail making...

(2.5 stars) Changed name from the odd Reverie Cat to Hanoi Shuffle, but eats like half-remembered Vietnamese crafted with white people at the centre. Pâté, for example, has been judged too weird and consigned to daytime banh mi, in favour of skewers, spring rolls and fishcakes at night. We tried butternut and blue cheese wontons ($12) which were overcooked and dominated by sweet pumpkin puree against a mildly flavoured five spice berry coulis that wanted for a chilli lift. Cocktails however drink well, from a short list populated by cocktail classics lightly updated with Vietnamese flavours. The Cay Bay Sazerac ($20) made on Vietnamese mint tea drank slightly better than the Vietnamese Negroni ($20), but both were pleasant, well presented drinks.

While the dishes looked great on Instagram, the stone pot coconut sauce that dragged me in with Bau Truong’s wonderful sea snails in coconut broth dancing in my mind, didn’t live up to the memory. Here the dish presents rather textureless garlic prawns ($28) in a super-heated stone pot. As the dish continued to cook at the table, the sauce reduced to an unpleasant pasty consistency. We were told by floor staff we just didn’t eat it fast enough. Sa pa spiced braised beef ($30) was a bit dry and bland, with the accompanying cassava needing more cooking time, though the kumera was fine. The Vietnamese crispy pancake, taken in pork and prawn ($24), was super thin with the crisp-skinned pork having good bite. With flavour on the light-side, we asked for more heat and received a ballistic bowl of little red chillies: the tastiest thing I consumed all night. Staff are certainly enthusiastic and eager to please, but there are many better places to eat “modern” Vietnamese food, including fusion...

Poor delivery experience. We ordered 4x pho noodle soups and they were not adequately packaged by the restaurant (bags overstuffed), resulting in the contents of 3 of the 4 soups completely spilling in the packaging. Could not even bring them into the house.

I contacted the restaurant immediately to explain what had happened and provided them with 3 different ways they may have been able to resolve the issue quickly for us so that we could receive what we paid for:

Have someone from the restaurant run down the soups to our house. Re-order via Uber Eats so that we could receive the soups. Arrange a taxi/Uber to deliver our meal to us.

20mins going around in circles on the phone with the restaurant (who would only provide a solution of us driving to them to collect the order - not possible and this is why we ordered delivery in the first place ) before they hung up the first time. 7(!) further attempts to contact them and all went to voicemail. I was finally able to get hold of them again, but it made no difference and they had no other solutions.

The worst customer service experience I’ve had in some time. I felt sorry for the person I spoke to, who clearly wanted to assist but did not have any authority to do so. He wasn’t able to put me on to anyone else - the owners of this establishment clearly aren’t interested in rectifying issues created by them without the customer either spending more of their own money or having to go out of their way to collect it themselves.

Can’t give any stars for the meal as it hasn’t turned up, but the service experience was decidedly 1 star. We are spoiled for choice in Rozelle and Balmain - will definitely be going...