Vung Tau Street Food

Hearing Sydney had a spot offering a regional type of bánh khọt had me hightailing it to Vung Tau Street Food in Cabramatta. Unlike the cupped soft yellow savoury mini pancakes common in the Mekong Delta, the coastal city of Vung Tau does a version that are flat, pale and crisp. The pancake batter is made of rice powder and coconut milk, and they’re dusted with shrimp powder, which makes them very effective prawn delivery systems. We took ours as the dac biet (special) bánh khọt ($15/8 pieces) with prawn and squid sprinkled with herbs. They eat best wrapped in lettuce with fresh herbs ($3) and dunked into the accompanying lightly spicy Vietnamese dipping sauce (nuoc mam). 

This food truck’s lemongrass pork skewers ($10/3) were another revelation: wafer thin they ate more like soft jerky than juicy meat. We dipped ours into a little pot of sambal oelek, which was fruity and super tasty. The friendly, family-run food truck team brought us out the jar so we could photograph it to buy some for home use, and gave us a little pot takeaway. Enjoying their camp-style set-up (though from a wooden bench rather than the precariously tiny plastic stools) we finished on sticky rice banana in coconut cream ($6). Tasty and not over-sweet, this Vietnamese dessert sees green sticky rice wrapped around a sugar banana. The parcels are grilled, unwrapped and assembled with a sauce of tapioca, coconut cream and palm sugar under a dusting of crushed roasted peanuts for  extra deliciousness! Can’t wait to return and try the rest of their (not-inconsiderable) menu.