Long Phung Vietnamese Restaurant

This restaurant nestled at 159 Joo Chiat Rd is a cosy little restaurant. It's been challenging finding a good Vietnamese food in Singapore, one that is just as good as the ones in Australia (not comparing to Vietnam because I haven't been there). Long Phung is definitely a great find, the food was affordable and tasty. If I had any complaints it would be that I wished the servings were slightly bigger, but that's because it was so delicious and we wanted more :)

The restaurant gets packed during lunch and dinner, so if you want to avoid waiting in line outside then come a little bit earlier.

The wait staff were all Vietnamese and seemed like they could speak Chinese more than English. Thankfully the menu has pictures. There is also an open air carpark conveniently situated right beside the restaurant.

Grilled Pork Chop with Rice. The Pork Chop is super fragrant and tasty! The plate if you compare to one that's served in Australia is a bit bare, most places in Oz would serve shredded pork skin and a steamed egg cake on the side instead of a sunny side up and often it would be broken rice. I wonder why no Vietnamese restaurants here serve broken rice.

This is Quail, 3 whole birds for $12. Not sure if it was grilled or fried, I think it was fried. But you can tell that it's been marinated and was pretty good. This is something I don't often have in Singapore. The dipping sauce was the best, it was peppery, salty and sour all at the same time and was really appetising. 

Beef Pho. This I give two thumbs up. Some people might not like the sweetness of the soup but for us we loved it. We loved the depth of flavour. My 7yo had this and she finished up all the noodles and was wishing there was more. This is one of the best phos I've had in singapore.

Rice Vermicelli with Grilled Pork and Springroll and Raw Vegetables for $$6.50. This was quite good and is one of my favourite Vietnamese dishes. But this presentation is kinda new to me because usually the noodles would be on the bottom and the vegetables and meat would be on top. The sweet, spicy, sour sauce/dressing that went with it was perfect. Makes me salivate as I type this :)

On the Wall. Many more items I want to try. 

Condiments, I like how the lime is served as a condiment, so you can add as many as you want.

Saigon Vietnamese Delicacy at 749 Geylang Road

I had high hopes for this place, reading the other reviews online I had expected really good Vietnamese food, one that would make you come back time and time again. There are tons of good Vietnamese food in Australia, and it's so hard to find one in Singapore that meets the same standards. So far, we have found none. The food may be acceptable but it's far from the ones we are used to in Oz.

On this stretch of Geylang Road, there are at least 3-4 other Vietnamese restaurants (which I have to get around trying eventually), so I assume competition is pretty tough. Previously we went to Com Tam further up the road which we thought was very homely and somewhat seemed authentic. I think we prefer Com Tam to Saigon Vietnamese Delicacy.

Below is what we ordered and we also had a couple of drinks, one was a durian shake (I didn't taste it so not sure if it's good or not, my Dad finished it though so must be okay) and the other drinks were Lime Juice. I'm not really sure what went wrong with the Lime Juice, my one had a spoonful of granulated sugar on the bottom which just wouldn't dissolve. I was a bit surprised when I took my first slurp using the straw....as you can imagine I got a mouthful of sugar....not nice at all. Funnily enough the other cup didn't have it.

The restaurant felt homely and you could tell it was a family run business. Service was okay only, but the food came out really slow and one by one. Even the lime juice took at least 15-20 minutes to come out!

The food fell below my expectations, there was nothing I could really pin point saying it was terrible, but it also wasn't terrific. Very mediocre.  They have a FB site, go search for it and you can find their opening times. The shop was patronised by several Vietnamese people, so they must think the food is good enough. I don't think I would go back there again, but that's just me, if you like it, then hey great :)

This was called Water Fern Cake....it's basically rice cakes - tasted a bit like Chui Kueh that you can buy at hawker centres.

Special Beef Noodle Soup - it was 'special' because it had mixed beef toppings like beef balls, beef slices. The soup is super light, you can definitely taste the beef flavour, but we were looking for more Oomph!

Vietnamese Rice Noodles with BBQ Pork and Spring Rolls. This seemed ok, but my Dad mentioned that at Ion food court, there's a Vietnamese stall there that has the same dish for same price but gives a bigger piece of meat :p The sweet, sour, spicy sauce accompanying this dish and the rice dish was not bad. 

Rice with BBQ Pork chop, Steamed Egg, Shredded Pork Skin and pickles on the side. The pork was fragrant and tender (Com Tam one tastes better), the steamed egg, was alright only, I guess its appearance with the flecks of black fungus I think running through it makes it look less appetising. The shredded pork skin had a slightly weird taste to it, definitely the ones in Brisbane are much better. But this dish is passable because not many places have the shredded pork skin, and usually the egg is just a simple sunny side up.

Beef Stew with Rice/Bread/Noodles. This was 'interesting'. The soupy part was a bit gloopy, like too much cornstarch was put in to thicken the stew. The flavour was a alright, aniseedy and slightly aromatic, I'm convinced the yellowness is from turmeric or something. The beef was very tender, but this stew isn't anything I'd want to order again.

Yummy Viet at 704 Geylang Road

This place is only open at night, but they do have 2 other branches that are open during the day. We were actually in the neighbourhood to eat at Com Tam Vietnam, but it was 9pm and the place was full house. Even tho we weren't at the seedy side of Geylang, this late at night, it was still pretty sketchy with a couple of bars here and there and there were also too many....um let's say questionable ladies there that made us feel a little uncomfortable to be there. So we went to Yummy Viet which was just a couple of doors down. The place is indoors with aircon and nice decor. Too bad service wasn't served with a smile.

Foodwise it was ok - passable. It's not bad per se, but the other place seemed a bit better. Maybe we should've ordered similar foods to what we had at Com Tam in order to make a fair comparison. Maybe we'd just have to come back and try again :)

Lotus Root Salad - I expected some slices of Lotus Root, I really couldn't see any....were those white stem things supposed to be lotus root? More like the stems from Lotus flower or something. Anyway it did taste good, all the veggies were pickled. My Dad liked it too. Very refreshing BUT at $5+ a plate....it was a little small in serving. 

Steamed "Gong Gong" - Caelyn's favourite. What is it in English? Sea Snails? Very clean, must've been scrubbed well!

Beef Noodle Soup - the soup was tasty, but the meat was a little tough.

BBQ Pork Rice Noodle. When it first came I was like, where's all the veges???? The meats in the dish was nice and there was this fried spring roll on the top too. It came with a small amount of sauce, and I thought it wouldn't be enough, but surprisingly it was just right.

So the veggies were hidden underneath, you only see it after you mix it....so...not really good presentation....

Com Tam Vietnam - Corner of Geylang Rd and Lor 42 Geylang (update: shop has moved to 159/161 Kitchener Road)

UPDATE (13/4/15): One of my readers have just informed me that this shop has moved to 159/161 Kitchener Road.

This place was a great find that we accidentally stumbled upon. We were actually in the area to try a different Vietnamese restaurant which was unfortunately (or fortunately) closed. This is an outdoor coffeeshop type of 'restaurant', so I was a bit skeptical whether it would be nice or not, or whether it would just be chinese food being passed off as Vietnamese food. Anyway, since our tummies were already grumbling, we decided to give it a try.

Well it was well worth it. Portions are decent, taste is quite good and the menu has a large selection to choose from - and no GST and service charge!

This place isn't in the seedy side of Geylang, so even in the evenings you'd feel comfortable going here. And there were also Vietnamese nationals dining there, so they must think it's close enough to what they could get at home? We will definitely be going back to try the other stuff on their menu.

The Menu

The Menu

Specials of the Day - no prices on it tho?

Lorong 42 Geylang. Right opposite is a fresh seafood supplier, they have live oysters and live king crab!

BBQ Pork Chop with Rice and dipping sauce. Look at the size of that pork chop! It was really good and the sauce was really good too. I wonder why the vietnamese shops here don't have broken rice though and the rice plates with the bbq porks never comes with that yummy egg and shredded pork skin that we always get in australia. 

It was glistening....

Beef Pho...very yummy

Deep fried chicken feet with garlic and chilli...this was good, very spicy though. But to be honest...there really wasn't much to eat of the chicken. The ends of the feet though were so crispy that you could even eat the bones.

Crispy Fried Squid. Caelyn loves squid, so we ordered this for her. She polished off most of it by herself.