Dong Que Vietnamese Restaurant

102 Hopkins Street, Footscray
P: 03 9689 4392


Last night's train schemozzle wasn't all bad news. I wouldn't go so far as to say there was all that much GOOD about it, but I managed to salvage one good thing out of the evening. It wasn't having my feet crushed on an over-crowded train from Flinders St to Footscray. It wasn't spending 40 minutes just trying to get off the platform at Footscray. It certainly wasn't being crushed underfoot as 6 carriage-loads of people fought to be the first to get onto the two buses that were replacing that train as far as Newport.

I made an executive decision: it was likely to take a LONG time to clear the crowds and the problem at Spotswood, so I decided to go get myself a little bite to eat to pass the time.

My selection criteria was quite simple. The place had to have an appetising menu. And it had to accept eftpos. After a couple of false starts, I ended up at Dong Que. They offer take away as well as eating in, and I think there'd have to be something on the menu for everyone.


I always find it hard to pass up an entree. And when there're vego spring rolls it's even more difficult. These little babies have only 5 ingredients in them... carrot, cabbage, mushroom... and I'm not sure what the other two are. But they all combine to form an amazingly yummy package that, with a drizzle of chilli oil, are an incredibly good way to start the meal. I'd planned to only eat a couple and take the rest home to eat today.... but I scoffed them all. Bad me.


I chose the lemongrass and chilli beef for a main. Good choice. Tender slices of beef lightly stir fried with carrot, snow peas, capsicum, onion and spring onion, chilli, and fragrant lemongrass. Lovely. So fragrant. Half of this (and half the serve of rice) became my dinner tonight too.


The lowest point of the meal was definitely my dessert. I chose a banana fritter with ice cream and chocolate topping. Don't get me wrong, the banana was delicious with a crisp coating. The chocolate topping was your basic, fresh-off-the-shelf topping (possibly the cheap brand), but it was still ok. No, the real let-down was the ice cream. I'm not sure what brand it was, but it has to be one of the worst vanilla ice creams I've had in a while.

Still, all in all, that was a bloody good meal. Enough so that I'm thinking of making dinner in Footscray on the way home a regular occurrence. I mean, I can't find anything decent as far west as where I live, so I might explore Foot-es-cray a little more thoroughly.... Hm...

Oh, and when I went back to the station a little before 8 buses were still replacing trains from Footscray to Newport, but instead of a mad crush there were only 6 of us. Much nicer.