Mister Nguyen

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133 Lower Plenty Rd. Rosanna, VIC 3084

My score: 3.5/5

A sticky, spicy grilled duck dish tells the story of Mister Nguyen, a clever, colourful new Vietnamese restaurant in hilly Rosanna. The maryland (leg and thigh) is marinated for 24 hours in five-spice, ginger, dark soy and more. It’s then slow-cooked in duck fat for four hours to meld the flavours and moisten the meat.

Grilled to order so the skin is deep golden, it’s piled with a fresh slaw of cucumber, carrot and beansprouts, the succulent and the crisp contrasting happily, like an ocean plunge on a hot day.

The inspiration for the duck dish is the banh mi baguette you might buy on the streets of Saigon. There, the meat would be tougher and the flavours stronger to please local palates. But here, people want their duck juicy, according to assiduous research by owners Thomas and Karen Nguyen. They’ve tweaked the original recipe to suit.

And that’s the formula of this restaurant: favourite Vietnamese dishes adjusted for modern Melbourne palates, served in a fresh, bright sunshiny yellow dining room.

When you sit down, you’ll get a pencil along with your menu. Mark the paper with quantities and circle your preferred sauces. Peruse the handy cocktail menu too (I can vouch for the Mekong Mule with rum and fresh ginger syrup).

The food is simple and generous. Rice paper sheets are layered and rolled with an eye on presentation; the pan-fried beef version goes well with peanut hoisin sauce. Fried chicken wings with chilli mayo are classic dude food. Soft-shelled crab stands sentinel on a vermicelli salad; it’s accompanied by prawn spring rolls.

Beef broth is cooked for 24 hours to make a subtle pho – extra love goes into this soup because whenever owner Thomas got good marks at school, his father would reward him with an outing for noodle soup.

Sharing memories of home is part of the Nguyens’ plan – see that picture of a boy on the back of a woman’s bike? That’s Thomas eating banh mi as his mother pedals her way to technical college.

The Nguyens moved to Melbourne last year; they’re both engineers but they harboured a food dream. The couple spent the past 12 months travelling Australia and eating in Vietnamese restaurants, assessing the local product, and coming to the view that they wanted to update the Laminex look of many of our pho joints.

Soft-shell crab vermicelli salad. Photo: Eddie Jim

The location was also part of their calculations: Rosanna and its north-eastern neighbours aren’t rife with modern Asian eateries but if the instant crush is any sign, they’re ready.

Lastly a note on the name. Nguyen is the most common surname in Vietnam and in many urban parts of Australia is second only to Smith as the most popular moniker. Even so, many of us are stuck on how to say it. Pronunciation varies in Vietnam but you can get reasonably close by saying “ng-win”. Practise it but even if you don’t make perfect, you’re still welcome at Mr Nguyen.

See their website.

First published in Good Food, 21st December 2017.