Phonatic

I love Vietnamese and this didn’t disappoint. Friendly welcome and an easy to navigate menu. They even had Saigon, the local beer! They have a broad phõ menu with a variety of other different dishes. Ours were served fresh and hot. Décor was funky and industrial with custom fittings and lights. Will be back!

We dropped by this place on a Friday night, it’s on Hindley Street, there is street parking or there is a hidden paid parking which is located on a side street, you will probably miss it as your drive pass the restaurant, which is about a 2min walk from the place.
Great place for either lunch, dinner or late snack for Vietnamese/​Asian food with a trendy bar attached. There are stools to sit or booths. Upstairs were currently renovated at the time when I was there, which will be more room for customers for the night life.
It was moderately busy on a Friday night, the staff were friendly and very busy that night in serving customers. The atmosphere was lovely with the happy customers that were mingling and drinking away at the bar.
The wall is painted and decorated with heart. The owner has presented his family history on the walls, so you have to definitely check it out. Very trendy with history.
I shared the entrée, and ordered the quail. Pan fried Quail (Chim Cut Chien Don), marinated perfectly with a side of lemon juice/​salt/​pepper, tasted exceptionally well. I’ve had better elsewhere, I’ve had worse elsewhere. This was middle of the range, editable but still a delight to eat. Thumbs up!
Next I shared the entrée of Thai pandan chicken, wrapped in pandan leaf and deep fried until crispy. There was a side of sweet chili sauce for dipping. I removed the pandan leaf, it was still hot and bit into it. It tasted like… chicken: D with the flavours of the pandan, ginger, fish sauce and other spices. YUM!
There are different types of Phở where you can mix and match different types of meat, I chose the Phở Tai Nam. Bò tái (sliced rare steak) and bò nam (flank). The bowl of phở arrived and the broth and bowl was hot, which is how it should be. The Bò tái always are slices that are raw and has to be cooked in the hot broth, so I mixed it in the bowl to allow cooking time. I add the herbs that is provided at the table which are some bean sprouts, mint, basil, coriander and a squeeze of lemon juice to add more flavour to this soup. It was quite filling, the broth was really good and delightful to eat. The soup was light and clear, with the aroma of beef and sliced onions, ginger and other spices. The noodles were fresh, flat and long which filled my belly up. Thumbs up!
For my drink I ordered the avocado smoothie (sinh to bo), which is more of a dessert. It was pale green, rich and creamy, sweet from condensed milk and had consistency to it. Thumbs up!
I’ll definitely have to come back again to check out the bar scene and upstairs night life.
Thumbs upx3!

This review i write with a somewhat bitten tongue, I’m going to be more generous than it maybe deserves due to it being the night Adelaide United won the grand final and being a city restaurant had a full house for a Sunday night which is something probably not a standard for Phonatic.
First of all, great staff. Really friendly and helpful trying really hard and the restaurant itself has a cool feel to it too.
Seats are a little too close together for my liking, especially tonight as we had children at the table behind us making noise with the standard ignorant parents not doing a thing about it.
Our group of four ordered several entrees all to be brought out before the mains… They came ONE at a time. So each person had a crowd of four eyeing off the person eating there first course!
When mine finally arrived. (10 minutes later) it was massivly over cooked and chewy (salt n pepper squid) we did send it back and the second effort was betTER but still far from the best I’ve had.
At this point a good 10 – 15 minutes after out actual ordering we were told they had no flounder in which one of us had down as the main. All well and good, places run out of things… But 10 – 15 minutes later after entrees to be told instead of when the order gets to the kitchen is ridiculous! It set back all the mains by another 20 or so minutes.
The only saviour in this was we had a great group and good chat in between all this with good wine
The BYO corkage another downfall being $ 15, most other Vietnamese restaurants we frequent max at $ 10 a bottle and some as little as $ 2!
They redeemed themselves with the main courses as far as flavour goes with the Phở, pork special and Snapper being quite nice and decent size too.
The staff really did try hard and seemed to care but a lot was lacking here, won’t be back myself as I have my favourite Vietnamese outside of Vietnam just 10 minutes further north.
Left full and happy with the price, and company was the highlight.
⁶⁄₁₀

Do you fancy a huge bowl of phở? How about a huge serving of the Vietnamese pancake, banh xeo? This place would desperately like to oblige. Newly opened, service staff hover about being overbearingly ingratiating. I understand that — but take a step back and let the food speak for itself — because the food is pretty great!
I ordered the banh xeo, and at around $ 16 you get a very decent rendition with (importantly) lots of salad and herbs to wrap it up in. The nuoc cham was also pretty good and likewise the pickles. As far as banh xeo go, it’s probably the best I’ve had in Adelaide. Still not on par with what you might get in Melbourne (huge, lacy and really crispy) but everyone else in Adelaide has been really doing this dish a disservice. It’s good to finally get one that isn’t incredibly oily and soggy — or worse, served with (argh!!!) fancy lettuce.
Definitely worth checking out: you don’t normally get generous servings of food like this at these sorts of prices except in the outer suburbs!