My Friend Asian Cuisine

It was a lazy Friday evening and I had finally dragged M to My Friend Asian Cuisine, tucked away in the Watson shops. I had developed an unnatural fascination with this restaurant ever since discovering its delightful name while scoffing scrambled tofu at lovable next door Satis.

 

My Friend Asian Cuisine serves, more specifically, Vietnamese food, and seemed to be doing a roaring (mostly take-away) trade with the local Watson punters. It is BYO, has simple décor and friendly staff. From the outside, the blinding plastic sign, wonkily hung Christmas tree lights and closed venetian blinds don’t exactly entice you inside, but the second, dimly lit room (NB: not the one we were seated in) seemed to have quite a nice ambience. We bopped along to what seemed to be the MarioKart soundtrack as we perused the long menu.

 

As an entrée, we tried the battered fish with lemon, salt and pepper sauce. Predictably, these little fish chunks were pretty oily and not home-battered but the most bemusing element was the sauce. It was literally lemon juice with salt and pepper in it and looked pretty unappealing. Sure enough, it tasted like that lemon stuff you squeeze out of a yellow bottle, rather than real juice and was incredibly salty and grainy. The fish itself was tender though.

We ordered the flaming beef which sounded exciting but wasn’t really. It came out as a regular dish but a little alcohol was lit underneath the bowl it was sitting in so the sauce bubbled away next to us. The beef itself was not particularly good quality and the sauce was thin and reasonably bland. However, the serving was generous and I loved the large quantity of vegetables in the dish.

 

We also chose the XO chicken. I was expecting a thick, spicy, vibrant and fishy XO sauce but disappointingly, the sauce was thin and bland again. We didn’t really enjoy the chicken in this dish either.

 

Last came our caramelised claypot pepper fish. This was our favourite of the night. The sauce was peppery but sweet and while quite well balanced, it wasn’t really caramelised. The fish was tender but again, the sauce was disappointing.

Prepare yourselves: the prices here are incredibly reasonable. Most dishes are around $13 or $14 dollars and are large portions. We had 3 mains, an entrée, rice and tea and were charged just over $50, which seemed miraculously cheap. We also noted that the food came out fast: worryingly fast!

While I enjoyed their ‘eat more veggies’ campaign, and was impressed at their prices and smiley staff, I’m not convinced this will become one of my regular Friday night haunts. 

My Friend Asian Cuisine

Shop 2, 1 Watson Plc, Watson

Ph: (02) 6241 6800