Lido

A group of workmates and I went to have Vietnamese after work one Friday evening and decided to head to Lido, which is undecidedly not very Vietnamese. It's more Vietnamese catered for Australians and that becomes even more evident as the early evening turned into a dinner rush, and the restaurant became packed with non-Vietnamese people.

 The first time I ate there it was rather bland and the flavours just didn't work. This time around I was rather surprised by the overall taste - flavoursome, not too salty but definitely not authentic flavours of Vietnam.

 

To start  the night there was a round of drinks. Matso mango beer from a brewery in Broome and having one of my favorite smoothies; avocado!  Creamy nutty yummy goodness! 

Avocado Smoothie goodness on the left and Matso Mango Beer on the right

After the drinks there was a couple of entrees. The first was the lovely Vietnamese prawn and vegetable rice paper roll. It was refreshingly light and delicious, great appetizer and too popular that it was gone before I could take a photo! 

 

There was also the traditional vegetarian spring rolls - crispy and golden! Deep fried goodness.

Vegetable Spring Rolls

Then there was the delicious golden and rather huge stuffed chicken wings! The stuffing was generous and well made - probably one of the best stuffed chicken wings in town!

Stuffed Chicken Wings

We then got a little too excited. And ordered a vast selection of mains. We ordered half a crispy chicken. This simple dish can go so badly wrong but Lido did it just right. Crispy golden skin and succulent chicken meat that was not dry. Only pity was that I wanted more.

Crispy Chicken

Crispy chicken was followed by kangpo beef (oh I may have made that up because I really can't remember what the Vietnamese name of the dish is called.. So dreadful of me!) It's just beef cubes seasoned well, sitting on top of a bed of salad well with amazing sauce that needs to be poured all over the beef. This was one of our favorite dishes. The aroma, the beef cubes were cooked well, although some were a bit chewy but the taste was a balance of salt, sweet and spices. 

Beef "kang po"

We also ordered prawns with this coconut tomato sauce (I forgot what it's called... I really need to take notes of what I eat next time)... Nonetheless it was delicious! I'm not sure if the prawns were fresh or if they were the frozen ones but the sauce was this coconut and tomato sweetness without it being too creamy.

Prawn with coconut and tomato

Then there was the tamarind squid, something I didn't get to taste due to my unusual allergy to all things squid (and its family group). But from the comments around the table the squid was well cooked, not rubbery or chewy and teh tamarind flavours added something a little special to what is otherwise a simple stir-fry-like dish.

Tamarind Squid

Having covered the seafood dishes we ordered the seasame seed coated sweet pork cutlet. This again is another dish which can turn badly if the wrong cut of pork or the quality of pork is used. However this wasn't the case for us. It was succulent and the sauce was sweet and sticky.

Seasame seed sweet pork

To even out the meat dishes we had some stir-fry vegetables. This was a colourful dish of green, red and yellow vegetables. It had a bit of tapiaco to "glue" the dish together - just a simple delicious and somewhat "healthy" option to try to offset all the other carnivorous dishes.

 

Stir-fry Vegetables

Overall, Lido dishes were flavoursome, although not authentic Vietnamese per sa, it is still delicious and offers a wide variety of choices. The thing is though the servings are a little on the small size compared to other Asian restaurants and the price dearer. However it is still cheaper than most other cuisine. One to at least try.