The Vietnamese
194 Wickham St, Fortitude Valley Qld
A recommendation from friends brought a group of people together at this simply named restaurant, and what a good one it was. We enjoyed bean curd salad in rice paper, rolled by an expert (it turns out you are supposed to fashion the wraps into parcels, rather than the pipes I have vainly sought to manufacture in the past), vegetables in satay sauce, and steamed green vegetables with garlic (the cook kindly substituted this for the oyster sauce that is usually used; the combination of greens with garlic, which has parallels in Greek cooking, provides a simple yet utterly satisfying taste.) But the highlight of our meal was the wondrous vegetarian spicy noodle soup, in which many vegetables and thin noodles came swimming in a thick sea that was flavoured with flecks of chili and dried fried onions. Not only was the soup delicious, but it was served in an enormous bowl filled nearly to the top! The quality of the food was one of the ingredients of a very happy occasion.