Vietnamese @ Roll’d

So I’ve heard all this buzz around the Vietnamese street food stall, Roll’d, set up in the Canberra Centre food court. I was going to order the pho but it was a pretty hot day, so I thought a cold pork banh mi (Vietnamese pork roll) would go down better.

I ordered the classic pork roll ($7.20) that was filled with pickled carrots and cucumber, coriander, spring onion and cha lua (best described as a Vietnamese pork sausage). To be honest, I was disappointed with it. Though very fresh, it lacked some crucial factors: I couldn’t taste much pate..actually I’m not quite sure if there was any; there was only one sliver of cha lua so it was really more of a vegetable banh mi;  and I would have preferred slices of Vietnamese pork ham with the thin layer of fat around it as it just didn’t taste right. Looking through other people’s photos of Roll’d banh mi on Urbanspoon, I can see slices of the ham so perhaps they ran out when I got there.

I also thought I’d try the fresh rice paper rolls, known as ‘soldiers’ here. They range from $3.20-$3.80 each.

I ordered the prawn and pork, barramundi, and BBQ chicken to go. I was asked what sauce I wanted, and I chose the hoisin sauce, not realising I get to choose one sauce per roll so I ended up getting 3 hoisin sauces.

These were pretty thick and a decent size. However, again, I was disappointed. The meat you can see on top is the only meat in the whole roll. The barramundi (first from the left) came with only two tiny pieces that had been deep fried. I could just make out the fishy flavour but it had mostly been fried to a crisp. The rest of the roll (95%) was stuffed with vermicelli rice noodles and coriander. The BBQ chicken (middle) was tasty and slightly meatier. I didn’t like the prawn and pork (far right). The pork was quite tough and dry, and there were 2 halves of a tasteless prawn. I wouldn’t buy these ‘soldiers’ again.

Overall, not impressed with the food here but I would still like to try their pho. Service, on the other hand, was extremely friendly and fast. Not to mention bottles of Mt Franklin water are only $1!

Foodgasm 3/10