When Alissa and I want a quiet Saturday night in but are ill-prepared or can't be bothered to cook, deciding on a place for an impromptu dinner out can be a real challenge. We invariably want something a bit more than just the regular local haunts, however having only just decided to eat out, the places that take bookings would be largely booked out already, and wait times at hip places with a strict walk-ins policy will be many times longer than the meal time itself. The last Saturday of August was one such night for us, and all the options didn't gel - I wasn't in the mood for pizza or Indian or Thai, and we'd just popped into Kai for ramen and udon the night before so Japanese was out of the equation. Having watched a Hanoi-oriented episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations earlier in the day, I was craving Vietnamese food but couldn't be bothered facing the crowds in Northbridge or the long drive to our favourite Bun Cha restaurant Little Lang Nuong in Girrawheen. That's when I remembered Thach's Quan Restaurant (also known simply as TQR), a Vietnamese restaurant on Stirling Highway in Nedlands across the road from Pata Negra.
