GoodDays
RESTAURANT
Your local Vietnamese restaurant isn’t normally the joint you take your vegetarian friend to. And if you’re vegan, forget about it. But GoodDays in Brunswick is an exception. Half of Nam Nguyen’s menu is vegan-friendly, and the meat is ethically sourced.
Nguyen found that the vegetarian and vegan offering at most Vietnamese restaurants was an afterthought; they don’t put as much care into it as they do their meat dishes.
His Sydney Road restaurant serves a peerless vegetarian pho, made with a shitake and kombu stock, served with noodles and four types of mushroom – king brown, shimeji, enoki and shitake.
Meat produce is not only free-range, but some of the best quality available. Milawa chook is used in the pho ga, and served over rice in a Vietnamese take on Hainanese chicken. McIvor Pork and Australian prawns are rolled in rice paper rolls. Hagan’s Organic Butchers provide beef for the bún bò hue, a spicy beef noodle soup with origins in Central Vietnam.
GoodDays has counter service and can seat around 25. Designed by Matt Stuckey of Be Friendly, it’s an elegant little space with walnut cladding, spring-green walls and chequered hexagonal tiles.
There's tap beer from Kensington’s Henry Street Brewery and Victorian wines.
by
Your local Vietnamese restaurant isn’t normally the joint you take your vegetarian friend to. And if you’re vegan, forget about it. But GoodDays in Brunswick is an exception. Half of Nam Nguyen’s menu is vegan-friendly, and the meat is ethically sourced.
As a brother, boyfriend and mate of vegetarians, Nguyen says he’s conscious of the impact his food has on the community. “I find that a lot of Vietnamese restaurants, their vegetarian or vegan offering is an afterthought,” he says. “They just whack it on there because some people come with vegetarian friends and they need something to eat. But probably generally, they don’t put as much care into it as they do their meat dishes.”
His new Sydney Road restaurant is serving a peerless vegetarian pho, made with a shitake and kombu stock, served with noodles and four types of mushroom – king brown, shimeji, enoki and shitake. “It’s hard to get a vegetarian noodle soup to be as good as a meat one, because it was never created for that reason,” Nguyen says. “But I think we’ve done fairly well, and the response from people around here has been pretty good.”
Meat produce is not only free-range, but some of the best quality available: Milawa chook is used in the pho ga, and served over rice in a Vietnamese take on Hainanese chicken. McIvor Pork and Australian prawns are rolled in rice paper rolls. Hagan’s Organic Butchers provide beef for the bún bò huế, a spicy beef noodle soup with origins in Central Vietnam. “For a lot of Vietnamese people, including myself, it’s probably the favourite noodle soup, but it hasn’t quite crossed over to the mainstream in Australia,” says Nguyen.
Originally from Adelaide, Nguyen ran a bánh mì chain named Soonta there. After serving around 1100 customers a day, he wanted to get back to the food he is passionate about. “You can’t push restaurant-quality food to that many people. Obviously, it gets a little compromised,” he says. “I wanted to do something that was more reflective of who I am.”
GoodDays has counter service and can seat around 25. Designed by Matt Stuckey of Be Friendly, it’s an elegant little space with walnut cladding, spring-green walls and chequered hexagonal tiles.
When a liquor license arrives in the coming weeks there’ll be tap beer from Kensington’s Henry Street Brewhouse, Victorian wines and maybe a little whisky.
Hours:
Wed to Sun
12pm–3pm, 6pm–9pm
Wed to Sun
12pm–3pm, 6pm–9pm
No comments:
Post a Comment