Tan Viet, Cabramatta

Why hello, crispy skin chicken of my dreams. Where have you been all my life?

To finish off my little Cabramatta series (for now!), Lili, Betty, Leona and I stopped by Tan Viet for their famous crispy skin chicken. We were so full of food, after stuffing ourselves at Bau Truong and eating some other sweets which I'll talk about later, but we were determined to fit in some of this chicken. It must be good, their logo is a huge yellow chicken and there was a huge line of people coming out of the restaurant for most of the day. Lucky for us, by about 2pm we were able to walk straight in and get a table. The waiters seemed a little bemused that we were only ordering one plate of chicken and a side of grilled pork, but we didn't care, it was exactly what we wanted.

The air in the restaurant is thick with the smell of deep frying chicken and grilled meats. Almost every table has a plate of dark golden chicken. It doesn't take long before our fullness is forgotten and our mouths are watering in anticipation. We sip the cheap tea (which I always find so thirst quenching, I don't know why) and have a giggle at the 'engrish' menu, 'Cash only, no effpot!' and 'Criskin chicken' (though maybe this one was just their cute branding?).

Com Ga Da Don - 'Criskin Chicken & Tomato Rice' ($10.00)

The service is lighting fast and before we know it we have a steaming hot plate of crispy skin chicken which looks so damn good. The photos are taken in a hurry and we dig straight in. Ohhh yep, it tasted as good as it looked. The skin was uber crispy, crackling as your teeth sunk through it and giving way to the perfectly moist meat. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. We may have been doing some serious stomach stretching at this point but it was so worth it.

*drool*

The tomato rice that comes with it is pretty good, definitely better than a lot of the ones I have had in the past. I find a lot of places do a really terrible job with the tomato fried rice, it's always too bland and dry. This one has a decent amount of flavour and goes well with the chicken. We don't finish it, not when we could save the stomach space for the grilled pork that we got on the side. For just a few dollars, how could we resist?

Side serving of grilled pork ($4.00)

The pork is also quite crispy and moist on the outside, though it looks and tastes very different to the grilled meat at Bau Truong. I think if I remember correctly (sorry it was a while ago!) we detected some sort of herb or spice on the surface. It was very moist and delicious, but the chicken was still the stand out.

Oh and did I mention we had spent the whole day eating a ton of other things? I'm starting to feel sorry for my stomach. A huge lunch was followed by a small amount of wandering around and then we stopped by kaysone sweets to get me my durian shake that I was so determine to try for the first time. To make things a little more exciting, I got a shake that had both durian and avocado mixed into it. A huge splash of sweetened condensed milk and a load of crushed ice is blended into the fruit, and it's heavenly. It was a surprise how moreish it was, even the durian wary among us didn't think it tasted too bad. It was incredibly rich though, even though I enjoyed each mouthful I felt increasingly full as I made my way through the cup. I think over the space of an hour I only managed about half of it before I had to admit defeat.

Durian and avocado shake

Lili was hoping to get a rainbow combination drink and we were more than willing to share one with her :) We found a great place which made the drink with a scoop of icecream and sweetened condensed milk rather than coconut milk. I actually preferred this to the coconut milk version, which I found made it far too rich. Barley, pandan jelly works, pink glutinous rice balls, red bean, palm seeds and jackfruit turned out to be a great combination and my favourites were definitely the glutinous rice balls and the jackfruit.

Ahh Cabramatta, how I love thee. Rest assured, I will be back soon.

Tan Viet
Shop 2-3, 100 John St
Cabramatta NSW 2166
(02) 9727 6853
Mon-Sun: 9am-7pm


Kaysone Sweets
Shop 4, 59-61 Park Road
Cabramatta, Sydney
(02) 9755 5759

Check out my other Cabramatta posts:
- Bau Truong (Goat curry, custard apple shakes, crispy sticky rice)
- Phu Quoc and a general walk around Cabramatta (Vietnamese spring rolls, custard cakes, pandan waffles, mooncake, flowering tea and rainbow drinks)