Tran's

9.3 Highly Recommended

Food  10      Ambience  8      Service  10      Value  9     

The best vietnamese on the north shore, Tran's is consistently lovely. The food is so fresh and delicious. Favourite dishes include the rice paper rolls, lemongrass chilli sirloin and cha ca Hanoi (grilled fish with rice noodle salad). The flavours are perfect. Tran treats regulars like members of the family. The service is relaxed and attentive which is perfect any night of the week.

Mar 22, 2012 

8.5 Highly Recommended

Food  9      Ambience  8      Service  9      Value  8     

We went to Trans for the first time recently and had a great time. The restaurant was cosy and the food was excellent. The famous pancake was as great as I had heard about. A little pricey but worth it for great service and delicious food!

Jan 22, 2012 

9 Highly Recommended

Food  9      Ambience  8      Service  10      Value  9     

Great food, perfectly prepared. Friendly service. Just a little pricey, without breaking the bank.

Jan 10, 2012 

10 Highly Recommended

Food  10      Ambience  10      Service  10      Value  10     

Outstanding. Menu has a mixture of creative fusion and traditional fare. I've eaten here many times have never left disappointed. My wife and I and the many guests we have taken here have sampled the entire menu and now find it hard to choose. We always get the quail starter and usually go for a hotpot curry. Curried prawns are a favourite. I love the scallops with smoked eggplant. My wife loves the lemongrass chicken. You can't really miss. The service is slick and friendly.

Jan 09, 2011 

7 Recommended

Food  8      Ambience  7      Service  7      Value  6     

A long established BYO restaurant in Mosman, worth visiting to try the pancakes and the duck which are always good. The negative is that for Vietnamese food it is a little more expensive than other places in Sydney.

Jan 09, 2011 

6 Average

Food  7      Ambience  6      Service  6      Value  5     

Tasty food but small servings. Cost us about $186 for 3 entrees, 3 mains, 2 desserts and 4 coffees and I was still hungry. I think that it is expensive for Vietnamese food. I expected more and will not be back.

Aug 29, 2010 

5.3 Average

Food  6      Ambience  7      Service  3      Value  5     

After reading the glowing review in the Good Food Guide, I was expecting more. Things started out nicely, with the pancakes for starter and they were absolutely superb. Next was the crab in soft shell which was nice but not amazing.
Unfortunately, our other main of the crispy boneless duck was terrible. Neither of us could eat it. It was shame to send the duck back virtually untouched, especially at ~$30 a serve.

I can’t remember the last time I couldn’t eat a meal. But it just really didn’t taste nice, maybe it just wasn’t to our taste. The dessert of crème caramel was, I guess, as good as crème caramel could be, but it was not amazing. I think the thing that really spoiled things was the service. It started out ok, and the staff were friendly enough. But when it got to about 10:15 pm, there were 3 couples left in the restaurant, and the wait staff made no secret in the fact they wanted us out of the restaurant.

Bringing out the bills unannounced, and blatantly staring. 10:15 pm on a Thursday night is not that late, really. Overall, disappointing, and I won’t be back.

Apr 14, 2010 

9 Highly Recommended

Food  9      Ambience  9      Service  9      Value  9     

Definitely one of my favourite restaurants. It's vietnamese fusion in a warm 'neighbourhood' setting, with warm yellow walls, b&w photos of vietnam and crisp white table clothes. The service is always impeccable and the food is to die for. It's best to go with a few (at least 4) people so you can get more dishes and share!

We always lean towards: entree : the rice pancake. Mains: crispy boneless duck
marinated sirloin steak on watercress, pork belly (usually a special), young prawn curry but everything is good. Goat curry and Drunken Cow are also favourites.

Feb 06, 2010 

8.8 Highly Recommended

Food  9      Ambience  8      Service  9      Value  9     

We've been there a number of times and my wife just love the Pan cake (banhxeo), the Lemongrass Porkbelly and the creme caramel. Service was pleasant and the price was good value for the quality of the produces, will be back again.

Oct 13, 2009 

5.3 Average

Food  4      Ambience  7      Service  6      Value  4     

Oooooh, it has so much promise, and then ends up so disappointing! Its been years since I last visited Tran's but had remembered it fondly (not fondly enough to make it a regular though). First up the pancake, good, very good in fact, but I did need some fresh chili to jazz it up to my taste. Then the first disappointment, Banh Xeo I think they're called, being little fat discs of rice noodle with some prawns sitting on them.

Not much bang for your buck or a flavour sensation for that matter. More of the same to follow: we were so excited to spot the cha cha fish on the menu and had visions it being the sensational dish we had enjoyed in Hanoi. While featuring essentially the same ingredients, it was definitely an impersonator, but was only a pale shadow (especially in flavour, and also in texture) of what we had enjoyed there.

Worst of all was the lemongrass and chili beef where lovely tender beef was simply overwhelmed in a gluggy sauce where the golden mountain sauce flavour completely overwhelmed the lemongrass (with nary a whisper of chili). It looked so unappetising, my husband likened it to looking at a can of Pal, and I can't say I disagree, we actually enjoyed it so little, we hardly touched it so had it packed up for the dog for her breakfast the next day (at least she ate it).

Also, with rice costing $4 a serve, it would have been courteous of the staff to educate that one would have been enough for us, especially as one of our mains was a noodle dish (normally I would work that out myself, but I'm a bit desensitized having just come back from Asia where the rice costs nothing, so I made a bad, bad assumption that it was the same here).

At only a few dollars shy of $100 for food alone, we left feeling very unsatisfied and ripped off by the experience. Never again!

Oct 07, 2009