By Two Sisters, Melbourne CBD by Bureaucrat

With the proliferation of food trucks, we're definitely seeing more eateries that are mobile and not located in a fixed location.  Perhaps an offshoot of the food trucks are the food delivery eateries.  What do I mean by this? 

For example, By Two Sisters is a Vietnamese eatery that doesn't really have a fixed location, per se.  You order your meals online and they deliver it to you.  Alternatively, they have outlets dotted across the city.  This is how I came across BTS.

While on the hunt for lunch one day, BTS had a little stall set up to promote its business.  This included taste samples of their four dishes.  Having had a squizz of the samples, I thought I'd try this for lunch.  I headed over to the closest outlet - in this case, Food Inc, on Elizabeth Street.

Although I was told by the staffer at BTS that these outlets know that they stock their dishes, when I ordered at Food Inc, the kitchen staff looked a bit confused.  After a moderately long-ish wait, I finally get my order - betel leaf beef w vermicelli noodle salad.  First impression when I took the lid off was, 'hm'.  This wasn't quite what I was expecting.  I definitely didn't expect a plastic pouch of nuoc cham dressing.  I just seemed a bit manufactured and clinical.  Given its name "By Two Sisters" I was expecting something a bit more homemade and less prepackaged.

Having set aside the pouch of dressing, I saw the noodle salad and thought "hmmm....".  A rather uninspiring melange of shredded lettuce, beanshoots, sliced cuces and mint.  An average amount of vermicelli and four or five rolls of betel leaf beef.  I'll start with the one good point - the betel leaf beef.  Tightly wrapped with betel leaves, the beef was flavoursome.  The betel leaves had its nice grassy and slightly smoky flavour to it.

The not-so-good points were the salad itself.  The dressing was quite bland and toned down in flavour - as if to make it appealing to as many people as possible.  I really didn't like the dressing at all.  The noodles were a tad undercooked - maybe they were trying for al dente - but it came off as been a tad raw and hard in texture.  For the price ($12), I was expecting more beef and salad ingredients.  I didn't finish the salad and got something else to eat instead.

Verdict

Food - 6

Ambiance - 7*

Service - 6.5

Price - 6.5

* Score is notional as it's a takeaway service from an outlet or via online ordering.

Overall

While I like the variety that online-delivery eateries bring to the food scene, I'm not yet convinced that they've perfected the implementation of it.  While they do give convenience, for the price and what you get, it's not worth it.  Having tried BTS, I'd definitely prefer to get the same types of noodle salads from Roll'd or Rice Paper (I've got a review coming soon), where you get more for your money.

Address

By Two Sisters

131 Queen Street

Melbourne 3000

Telephone: 1300 721 179