Kim Thanh Restaurant

My friends have been going here for a while and they all love it. I think it’s okay… the phở is nice, but i’ve had better in Darra. The restaurant is a bit daggy but surprisingly does fill up.
Cleanliness could be a better factor here because sitting down on a dirty table with stickly tablecloth isn’t creating the best first impression for me. The spring rolls were okay I guess, they could have used more mince meat in them like the other Vietnamese ones I’ve been used to. The food, is quite reasonably priced, but for what you can find around the place, is a few dollars more than what the other local places charge. The service can also be a bit slow and the lady can give you quite a rude look if you’re calling her over to wipe your table as I found out… but it was DIRTY!
Not my favourite place in the world and I can’t understand why my friends keep going back (they don’t live near Darra obviously).

Compared to the other amazing Vietnamese restaurants on Hardgrave Road, Kim Thanh just doesn’t make the cut for me. Sure, they have a grander interior and larger tables, which makes dining there feel a lot more formal, but in the taste stakes they’re just not up to scratch. And the meals are a little pricey for what they offer. When I went I ordered the BBQ Pork with Rice Noodle and it was needlessly oily; it tasted fine, but the oil got to me, and I would have gotten a fresher and tastier meal at Trangs (down the road) for the same price.

Kim Thanh has some fierce competition with the numerous other good Vietnamese places along Hardgrave road. It seems like most people are loyal to one of them, and I happen to be a Trang-​goer, myself. There’s nothing wrong with Kim Thanh. They serve Vietnamese food better than you’d get most other places in Brisbane, but to me they just don’t live up to Trang a few doors down.
For one thing, unlike Trang, they won’t alter the stock that their soups are made on (which means no phở for us Vegos because they’re all made on fish or chicken stock). The experience at Kim Thanh is a bit less chaotic and frantic than at Trang, so if you feel like a more relaxing, lingering stay then probably pick Kim Thanh, but the prices are slightly higher to reflect this.
Everyone has a favourite Hardgrave road Vietnamese joint and mine isn’t Kim Thanh, but I can guess by its busyness that lots of people are Team Kim Thanh and I’m sure they’d stab me with a chopstick for not giving it five stars.

Kim Thanh is distinguished among the Vietnamese/​Chinese restaurants on Hardgrave Rd for a simple reason. Not because it offers any dishes that are greatly different from any of the other establishments, but because it has it’s own website. I’ve stopped in for lunch a couple of times and order their takeaway to share with friends at home, and found it to be passably tasty and quite cheap, with most dishes under the $ 15 mark.
As a general rule of thumb the Vietnamese options are better executed than the Chinese varieties, which despite their many options, are a bit ‘samish’. The soups like the Tom Yum and Combination Won Ton and Egg Noodle are particularly good, as are the Vietnamese salads.
***NEWS FLASH***
Since writing the above the ownership of Kim Thanh Restaurant has changed hands. By all reports the new management has ushered in a new GOLDEN AGE — with a little birdy telling me that the ‘tofu with kai lan’ and their homeade ‘lemon iced tea’ being particularly good. I only waited with him to get takeaway (must be working out the bugs because it took about 20 mins) but the place was bustling.
Check it out for yourselves!