Visiting Footscray

Stepping into Footscray feels like stepping back into Saigon (except that the streets in Footscray are wider and the place is a bit cleaner). The streets are packed with Vietnamese families and all the shop fronts display Vietnamese signs. I really do like visiting Footscray as it is nice to hear the familiar sounds of the Vietnamese language and I always imagine how my Grandma would love to walk around from shop to shop talking and gossiping with other old Vietnamese ladies.

We entered Little Saigon Supermaket to buy our groceries at around midday. There were hordes of people scrambling about and the supermarket was buzzing with noise and activity. It seemed like we were the odd ones out sporting our green cloth grocery bags rather than tartan shopping caddies.

The price of meat, fresh fruit and vegies are certainly much cheaper here in comparison to those at the standard Australian supermarkets. The complex also harbours smaller businesses including a handful of takeaway restaurants and bakeries selling the usual Vietnames pork rolls, sticky rice with meat/red bean wrapped in banana leaves and various Vietnamese desserts. Yum!

For lunch, we ventured outside to Hopkins Street to find a good pho restaurant and stumbled across Pho Hung Vuong Saigon. What attracted me to Pho Hung Vuong Saigon was not only the fact that the restaurant was full to the brim but also because of the good Vietanamese/Australian ratio (80% Vietnamese and 20% Australian customers). I figured that if there were a lot of Vietnamese in the restaurant, it must be cheap and good pho and if there was still a decent proportion of Aussies in the restaurant, it must be relatively safe to eat there! When we walked in, the whole place was packed and we had to wait in line for a table but not for very long.  As the place was so busy, we ended up sharing a table with two other customers.

As usual, we ordered pho tai (beef noodle soup with rare beef) which came out within 10 minutes of us sitting down. The broth was clean and quite nice. A medium bowl of pho goes for $9 there ($8 for a small bowl and $10 for a large bowl). It wasn't the best pho I have had but not the worst either. I always measure how good the pho is by just tasting the broth without adding any condiments first. I wouldn't go as far as saying that the broth was bland but it was just missing a bit of a punch - which, however, was soon fixed when I added some lemon, hoisin sauce and chilli sauce. I would definitely go back to Pho Hung Vung Saigon again and can certainly see why the place is so popular.