I probably drive to the city once or twice a week. I head down busy Port Road which seems to always have road works happening. During these trips I pass My Tho City Restaurant and wonder how much business they get and if the food is good. The My Tho City Restaurant is a lone restaurant located on a busy section of Port Road within a business area. Every time I drive past, I’m either in bumper to bumper traffic, or accelerating to get away from the traffic lights to get ahead of the traffic flow following.
During a recently planned family get together, it was suggested by Josie’s cousin that we give My Tho City Restaurant a try and we jumped at the chance. The restaurant is a located at 199 Port Road Hindmarsh and offers its customers Vietnamese cuisine. It is situated in a renovated house between two buildings which looks a bit out of place. Once there we had no trouble parking with various choices available along Port road or if you feeling healthy you can park in the Adelaide Entertainment car park and walk the 5 minutes back to the restaurant.
The converted home has an outside undercover dining where the front verandah would normally be and the interior has been opened up to allow a large dining area. The main dining room is decorated with various traditional Vietnamese items, a large fish tank and a bar area.
The menu is fairly extensive with a large selection of traditional Vietnamese dishes and a good selection of local wines. If you can’t choose a wine they do allow BYO with a AUD$15 corkage fee. With so many good dishes to sample we noticed that they offer four banquet options that give you the chance to sample a variety of different dishes. We opted for the AUD$34 per head banquet called “The Gourmet”. The gourmet banquet consisted of six dishes with tea or coffee to finish. The first dish was the My Tho mixed entrée plate, which contained chicken skewers, golden spring rolls, fried wonton and crispy sesame prawn toast. We all had a decent share of the plate and each sample was a perfect starter to a long meal.
The next dish to arrive was their beef salad sensation, a fresh cos lettuce leaf, cabbage, onion and beef, topped with a savoury dressing, coriander and broken peanuts. The salad was refreshing and the subtle flavours cleansed the palate.
Our third dish for the evening was their salt and pepper squid in light spices. They were lightly battered, salt and peppered portions which were cooked to perfection. The soft texture from the lightly oiled batter and the perfectly cooked squid lightly sprinkled with salt and pepper was delightful.
Soon the grilled chicken in herbs and spices arrived and was once again topped with a crumbled nut. The chicken was good without being exceptional. It was nicely cooked and the chicken skin was covered with various herbs and spices, but the flavour was a little too delicate to make it memorable.
A combination chicken hot pot with roasted cashew nuts and a large serving of special fried rice, were the final two dishes of the banquet. The combination hot pot, was full of chicken, prawns, bok choy, baby corn, capsicum, carrot and green beans. The hot pot had a good balance of textures and flavours. The large serving of special fried rice was not fancy. You can get the same dish from any Asian restaurant, but it was filling and rounded off the perfect meal.
After the meals are complete and the dishes are cleared, we finished it all off with a final cup of tea or coffee.
Overall the My Tho City Restaurant wasn’t what I expected. This nice comfortable restaurant isn’t in the best location on Port road, due to the volume of traffic that can bank up. But I could happily go back and do it all again. The service staff were attentive and welcoming. There also weren’t too fussed with me walking around taking photos, so that’s a bonus. The My Tho City Restaurant is well worth the stop, so don’t be like I was and drive by saying “I’ll might try that one day”. My advice is don’t just say it, do it, and when you do, tell them Simon from Ourworldinreview sent you!
My Tho City Restaurant rating: 1-10 (1=very poor, 10 = excellent)
Decor =8
Atmosphere = 7
Service = 8
Price = 9
Food =8
Overall = 8
