Cafe Hanoi (2)

Cnr Galway & Commerce Sts, Britomart. Ph 302-3478.
cafehanoi.co.nz
Lunch Monday-Friday; dinner 7 days.

There’s no stopping them at Britomart. Restaurants and cafes and bars and more and more keep opening, and the standard right around the place — compare it to any other food precinct in town — is uniformly, remarkably high. Cafe Hanoi is a flagship: one of the first of the new places to open, it offers casual dining in a high-ceilinged, generously proportioned, bustling and very cool room. The food is inspired by Vietnamese street stalls and hole-in-the-wall eateries, so it lacks a little of the vigour of the chilli and herbs you might find on the street in the actual Hanoi, but it’s tremendously pleasing all the same. The menu is quite small, which tells you they’re putting care into making each dish different, and they have a lovely line-up of teas. You can’t book, but there’s a big bar to wait at.

A favourite dish: Peppered soy shaking beef with red onion and watercress.
$$$   |  FP | V  |  FR  |  PR  |  G  |  B  |  BM  |  GB  |  K           what’s this?