Thanh Dat

After a fairly terrible day out fishing out at Mornington Pier (think lots of cold wind and rain, with no fish to reward our misery), I was happy to head into a warm restaurant in Springvale on the road home M's family.

I went into Thanh Dat with no pre-conceptions, but I found out later that it had a terrible rating on Urbanspoon, but I'm not sure it warrants it. 

While the food was by no means unique or particularly delicious, it wasn't inedible, as the rating would suggest. None of the dishes were particularly memorable, for good or for bad, and as is usually the case with these type of dinners, I don't even get a chance to glance at the menu but I'll try to identify these dishes for you nevertheless.

A pretty easy one to start off though, Special Fried Rice. 

Special Fried Rice

This was actually fairly good, with a reasonable interesting ingredient to rice ratio. The rice was well cooked, and the dish wasn't overly flavoured, although the ingredients were obviously not especially fresh. 

If there's one thing that this restaurant is good at, it's speed, and dishes come out extremely fast. Chicken, pork, beef and seafood dishes arrived at the table in quick succession, and were all reasonable although fairly uninspiring. 

Crumbed Chicken and Rice

It was so much of a blur though that I'm failing to remember what at least one of the dishes was. 

Mystery Dish & Pork Chops in the Background

Beeft and Choy Sum

Fried Squid

Because we were in Springvale, we also ordered some Pho.

Beef Pho

Combination Pho

I was disappointed with the pho though however; there simply wasn't enough flavour, and the ingredients weren't the freshest on the market.

A dish of greens rounded out the meal, but once again, the same ambivalence applied.

Bok Choy

In short, I don't think Thanh Dat deserves its terrible rating; sure the food isn't amazing, but it's decent, the service is fast (but not necessarily friendly) and the restaurant itself seemed relatively clean. They serve quick and cheap food, and don't advertise otherwise. That's reasonable to me.

Thanh Dat

22/268-274 Springvale Road, Springvale

Mon-Sun 12pm-10pm