Local Knowledge: Dining at Rocs & Rolls Is Loud With the Clatter of Seafood Shells Hitting Buckets

Wiley Park Hotel isn’t where you’d expect to find a menu packed with wok-fried shellfish and bold Vietnamese street food. Yet, that’s what you’ll find. Tucked inside this unassuming pub, Rocs & Rolls has quietly become a go-to seafood spot for those in the know.

The Tran sisters – Van, Thao and Thu – took over the kitchen in 2019, bringing the vibrant flavours of south Vietnam while blending the boozer’s no-frills vibe with their signature seafood dishes. They’re serving up snails, razor clams, Balmain bugs, whelks, crawfish and more, all bathed in your choice of house-made sauces: creamy salted egg, sweet chilli garlic butter, sticky tamarind, or punchy lemongrass, garlic and chilli sate. Every dish gets extra zing courtesy of a fiery, citrusy, peppery dipping sauce.

“In southern Vietnam, we love our seafood,” Thao tells Broadsheet. “This is the kind of food we’d go eat. But to be able to get these type of dishes, we’d have to go back to Vietnam. Before we started the restaurant, it was very hard to find something like this.”

It’s hard to go past the pot of fragrant lemongrass clams, swimming in sweet coconut water and served with nuoc cham, or blood cockles dressed in a saucy mix of garlic and tamarind. Other standout dishes include XO clams, as well as the grilled squid and chicken feet.

Van, a trained chef and the creative force behind Rocs & Rolls, moved to Australia nearly 15 years ago, followed by Thao (a former marketer) and Thu (who also works as a nurse). They come from a family of nine siblings (three girls, six boys) and grew up in Ho Chi Minh City. “It’s the capital of this kind of street food, and we’ve taken in everything from there.”

Regardless of whether Van is or isn’t working, you can expect the same quality any time you dine. “The recipes that Van has come up with are fixed, so anyone who’s cooking in the kitchen follows those recipes. We want to make sure when a customer comes today or tomorrow, it still tastes the same.”

The sisters haven’t always served seafood. When they first opened, it was a typical pub fare menu, sprinkled with Chinese Vietnamese takeaway classics – steak, Mongolian lamb, black pepper beef cube and pho. (Some can still be found at the back of the menu.) Soon after opening, though, they decided to lean into their roots.

They expected a younger crowd to be drawn in by the change. “In the end, we see big families: the elder, the middle-age, and the young – that’s beyond my imagination.”

The restaurant operates on a cash-only basis. Takeaway is available, but according to Thao, the true experience is dining in, where the atmosphere – especially on a Friday or Saturday night – is loud, busy and filled with the clatter of seafood shells hitting bag-wrapped buckets.

Rocs and Rolls
67 King Georges Road, Wiley Park
0491 240 579

Hours:
Tue to Sun 11am–9pm

@rocs_and_rolls
facebook.com/rocs.and.rolls