First Coast - Vietnamese Night

First Coast is one of my favourite restaurants; the staff are friendly, the chef is fab and the place has a pretty relaxed atmosphere.  Unlike the name suggests, the frequently updated menu offers an equal number of meat and vegetarian dishes as well as fish/seafood.  It's always scrummy and they hold a themed night once a month, centered around a particular cuisine.  What makes this particularly exciting for me, in this post, is that the Vietnamese Night was the first themed night I was able to attend since their themed nights started Oct' 2010.  Here is a wee look at what we had....


Four sample dishes were served as the starter:

• Beef and betel leaf
• Our favourite -  the beef, encased inside the leaf, had a great combination of spices, tasted a little like Christmas and came with a cracking peanut salad.
• Cuttlefish and pineapple fried rice
• Joint second place - perfectly crunchy, smokey cuttlefish
• Crab salad
• Joint second place - lovely fresh, mint and thai-like flavours
• Tofu and noodle spring roll (v)
• Last place (only because the above were so good!)

Starters

We chose our mains; I had the chargrilled pork neck with noodles and Dave had the roasted baby chicken with kaffir lime leaf.  Definitely, Dave won the battle of the mains as the chicken had a sweet and spicy marinade and came with a hand bowl - so he was able to get stuck right in.  I also really liked that the chicken came with a side of salted chillies.  My pork was great, packed with a charred flavour, although a little bit on the tough side.

My pork main

Dave's chicken main - our fave!

Together, we shared a plate of side dishes; sticky coconut rice, sesame glazed pumpkin and aubergine salad.  These complimented both of our mains - unusually, the aubergine side tasted a bit like a smokey Edradour whisky!

The sides: sticky coconut rice, sesame glazed pumpkin and a (Edradour flavoured?!) aubergine salad

So now, pretty stuffed, we ploughed on and each accepted a plate of the three sample puddings:

• Lime tart
• With creamy custard centre and juicy pineapple topping - our favourite
• Tropical fruit with coconut cream
• Really liked that this came on a wee banana leaf square - 2nd place
• Silken tofu, ginger syrup and lychee sorbet
• I'm not a fan of lychees but this convinced me otherwise...not too sure about the tofu but all was made right by the warming chunks of ginger

The puddings: lime tart, tropical fruit and lychee/ginger/tofu

Bring on the next First Coast themed night!
http://www.first-coast.co.uk/