An Viet, a casual restaurant which opened late last year in The Gardens Mall serves a good selection of popular Vietnamese dishes best suited to the Malaysian palate. Using only the freshest ingredients, An Viet’s culinary team ensures authenticity by sourcing key ingredients like fish sauce, rice paper and rice noodles directly from Vietnam.
Prices of dishes are affordable and portions were sizeable. I checked out several of their signature dishes and enjoyed the variety served.
I started off with the refreshing Goi Cuon – fresh springrolls, rice paper rolls filled with fresh tiger prawns, Vietnamese vermicelli, carrots, cucumber, herbs and green coral. Served with a dipping sauce of 100% pure fish sauce.
Their Xoi Chien Phong must be their most visually unique dish. A big sphere of fried glutinous rice puff was served with grilled lemongrass chicken salad. The rice puff was delightfully crispy and I broke it into pieces before eating them with spoonfuls of the aromatic chicken salad.
Vietnamese salads are always interesting in terms of ingredients and flavours. The Nom Hoa Chuoi was a typical Vietnamese medley of banana blossom, cucumber and carrots tossed in a refreshing salad sauce of pure fish sauce, topped with fresh tiger prawns and chopped roasted peanuts.
The Banh Trang Nuong was a flat savoury pancake made from rice paper filled with minced pork, quail’s egg, dried shrimps and grilled over a slow fire till crisp and fragrant. It’s something not to be missed!
A must-try is the Pho Bo – smooth rice noodles in a robust beefy broth, a result of a 12-hour-long slow simmer of beef marrow bones. The natural beef flavour of the soup was further enhanced with Australian beef tenderloin and brisket. A handful of fresh basil, beansprouts and a dash of lime juice and homemade Sriracha chilli sauce completed this wholesome bowl of beef noodles.
Another noodles dish – the Bun Cha consisted of grilled sliced pork belly and minced pork patties in a tangy spicy refreshing sauce, uplifted by pickled green papaya and carrots, mint leaves, basil and green coral with Vietnamese rice vermicelli by the side. The best way to enjoy this was to dunk the rice vermicelli into the sauce, let it soak up all the flavours before enjoying the delightful mixture of textures and aromas.
To discourage food wastage, diners in An Viet can choose the portion size of the rice and noodles (ranging from 80g to 200g per portion) which they can finish. There’s no price difference for any of the portion sizes.
AN VIET
Lot LG 203B The Gardens Mall
(near Jaya Grocer)
Mid Valley City
Lingkaran Syed Putra
59200 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 03-2201-1191
*Not halal
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