Dong Ba

My Dad works overseas but comes back home for 2 weeks every year for Chinese New Year. When he's here there's always 3 things that he wants to eat 1) Laksa 2) pho from Pho An 3) seafood from the fish markets.

Unfortunately Pho An always closes for 3 weeks during the CNY holidays (and we keep forgetting this!) so when we arrived at Bankstown on Sunday we had to look for an alternative. We would normally head straight to Pasteur but Mum wanted to try somewhere new. We noticed that Dong Ba looked really busy and thought that we would give it a go.

On entering the restaurant we were greeted by the enthusiastic waiter who tried to recommend dishes to try. He boasted that the spicy beef noodle soup was their speciality dish and 'very very nice' - with his big smile and excitement we were sold. It could purely be a matter of personal taste but we all thought that the spicy beef noodle soup was pretty bad. The taste of the soup reminded me of a Continental brand of Thai spicy soup that I once bought but with 10 x the MSG and a dash on washing detergent. I was also not a fan of the slices of processed chicken? pork? that was in the noodle. This was a first because I don't remember the last time that I couldn't finish a meal because I didn't like it.

The waiter would pace around our table looking really concerned that we hadn't touched our food and because we didn't want to disappoint him we just told him it was 'too spicy' (when this was clearly not the problem).

Spicy beef noodle soup $7.00 with sprouts and mixed greens

Jacky ordered the 'pork rib with rice $7.50' and said that this dish was ok. The prices here are very cheap and there are a lot of dishes to choose from. If i were to come here again I would probably stick with a rice dish.

Dong Ba
Bankstown
PH: 02 9708 0327