Category: Thai

Thai is a hugely popular cuisine in Sydney. Some of their staple food are Tom Yum, Som Tum, and Pad Thai. They also had other exotic dishes like durian.

Khing Thai

Rating:

7 / 10 Taste: 7/10

Price: $40-$60

Place: 7.5/10

Review:

Before you go nuts on the total price here, I must say that we ordered way too much for our tummy’s capacity. The whole fish was so big that we didn’t even finish a quarter of it! Let’s just rewind a bit, and I’ll explain in more details…

We went to Khing Thai restaurant because we were told by our friend that this restaurant was worth a visit. We were very impressed with the place. It had a nice and cosy feeling about it. They had a nice open kitchen setting (like any modern Thai places these days) and comfy table (and sofa) seating arrangements.

Soft Shell Crab – $9.90 – Deep-fried and crispy salt and peppered soft shell crab served with mixed salad and pickled ginger

The first dish got me thinking ‘I was right to order four dishes’ since it was a solitary crab. It was nice and crunchy with the usual optional sweet chili sauce.

Thai Fried Rice – $10.90 – Traditional Thai fried rice with egg, onion, cherry tomato and Chinese broccoli sprinkle with ground white pepper

The thought began to shift when I saw the fried rice’s portion. The picture didn’t really do justice since it was only compared to the size of plate. We could have just ordered two plates of fried rice and still left with a full tummy!

BBQ Chicken – $14.90 – Sliced chicken breast, grilled and marinated in turmeric powder and traditional Thai herbs served with mixed salad and sweet chilli sauce

Our next dish was a generous serving of BBQ chicken. They were perfectly grilled slices of chicken breast. You had a choice of making it sweeter with the sweet chili sauce or saltier with the soy chili sauce. If you ordered Thai Fried Rice like me, I suggest you leave both sauces and just enjoy it as is. The chicken itself already had a char-grill sweetness to it.

Whole Fish Khing Soy Sauce – $24.90 – Khing Thai’s homemade soy sauce made with young ginger strips, crushed garlic, soy bean, onions and shallots

We were in awe when the fish was brought out. It was one gigantic fish on a plate! They said we were lucky that the fishes in the market that day were all big. The fish’s size didn’t compromise its taste. It was perfectly steamed and very rich in flavour.

The final verdict for Khing Thai

Although it might be just above university students’ price range, Khing Thai delivered larger-than-usual dishes to make up for it. Coupled this with nice seating arrangements and you got yourself a decent place to eat in Kensington.

Details:

1/240-268 Anzac Parade, Kensington

Phone: +61 2 9662 0900

http://khingthai.com/

Nov 4, 2012
Phloey – Authentic Thai Cuisine

Rating:

8 / 10 Taste: 8/10

Price: $15 per person

Place: 8.5/10

Review:

We are back from our fantastic journey to Indonesia and ready to deliver you All About Food. This week, I am going to take you to one of the fine food in Jakarta. Phloey, self-titled Authentic Thai Cuisine was located in the lower level of Jakarta’s main street. It doesn’t cost hundreds of dollars to enjoy food in Jakarta!

Our evening started with a bang! The Sampler Platter looked simply stunning. Three of Thai food’s most common entrees arranged beautifully with a generous serving of sauce, presented in a cocktail glass. Our second entrée was the all-time favourite, Tom Yum Kung. Although the soup was designed for one, it was slightly too generous if you were to share other plates. The soup was refreshingly sweet and sour. Lastly, we ordered Som Tum Kung Pao. This was the traditional green pawpaw salad with a million of tastes in between. There was too much chilli to my liking on this one but that was how it was supposed to be. Nevertheless, three flawless entrees got me really excited about the restaurant.

Our first staple food was Pad See Yu. Some of you might recollect this as Fried Kwetiau, but this one was cooked Thai style. We also enjoyed Kai Ho Bai Teay – Fried chicken in pandan leaf. This chicken was a killer; One of the must order in the restaurant! I loved the texture and the rich chicken flavour infused with pandan. Keng Phed Ped Yang – Roasted duck in red curry with tomato and pineapple came next. There was really little to compare to the previous dish, in addition it was a bit sour for the duck (I like my duck tasty or sweet).

We ordered two fishes in this occasion. The first one was Pla Kao Sam Rot – Fried grouper with three-flavour sauce. Fabulous sweet and spicy fish filleted for your enjoyment. The next one was Pla Bu Pek Sa – steamed ‘lazy’ fish a la Thai. It was a different kind of steamed fish since Thai food was meant to be sour. The fish was extra soft and perfectly steamed! If only they toned down the sourness, I would devour this as quickly as I could.

Since we were really happy with the food, we decided to order desserts. The first one was Durian Sticky Rice. For some people, durian can be repulsive, but for me that was a nice dessert. The next one was mixed ice of pomegranate, young coconut, avocado and jackfruit. Es Delima is what it was called. The surprise came in last, what I had expected to be a simple Cassava turned out to be a masterpiece. They reinvented simple cassava to be jelly-like and reduced the rough texture of the dish.

The final verdict for Phloey

Phloey presented me with a unique opportunity to taste authentic food in a city where non-Indonesian food was hard to come by. They also managed to bring out real Thai taste to the table!

Did you know?

I couldn’t find the meaning of Phloey, if you know what it is, please let me know and I’ll update this part 🙂

Details:

Gedung Panin Center, Jl. Jend Sudirman Kav 11

+62 21 739 4018

Jul 4, 2012
Saap Thai Restaurant

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Unfortunately, Saap Thai has closed its doors for good.

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Rating:

7 / 10

Taste: 7 /10

Price: $10-$15 per dish

Place: 7/10

Review:

This week we are going to review one of my favourite Thai restaurants in town and it is surprisingly the first Thai restaurant I’ve ever reviewed (I think Blue Ginger doesn’t fall to the category of ‘pure’ Thai). Another surprise that I found was that Saap Thai Restaurant actually opened till midnight (possibly to counter some Thai restaurants near the area that open till quite early in the morning!).

One of the great traits of Thai food was that they are fully customisable. You can swap veggies, beef, chicken, pork, and seafood with no problem and the original taste of the dish will still be there. I wrote the following in the order of our preference and sense of completeness.

The first dish to come at our table was Chicken Pad See Ew. In a few words, it was sweet soy sauce rice noodles. It was a nice serving of one with slightly too much oil. Then came Stir Fried Beef in Cashew Nut. This one had a more vibrant flavour with combination of vegetables and mushrooms. Unfortunately the rice bowls came after these two dishes, so we had to wait a bit to start eating.

After the rice came my most favourite (not purely) vegetable dish in the city, Deep Fried Morning Glory Salad. This dish was so good that we decided to order for a second plate before the night ended. It was basically deep fried morning glory with an authentic Thai-style sauce and topped with seasoned minced beef (or pork) and fried shallots and coriander. Although it looked red, it wasn’t actually spicy.

The next dish caused a little bit of confusion in our group. It was Som Tum Goong – loosely translated to Green Papaya Salad with Prawns. For chilli haters like me, I said this dish was really mild (as compared to the next two), but most people in the table agreed that this one was the hottest of them all. Regardless, the dish was really refreshing. The dish was actually the traditional Thai salad dish with amazing combination of flavours.

If you don’t like chilli, I suggest you to avoid the last two dishes. Green Curry Duck was possibly the hottest curry on the menu. It might look pretty harmless from the outside, but it surely can work you out. The last dish of the day was Steamed Fish with crazy hot sauce. The sauce was actually the Thai’s sweet fish and peanut sauce, with overabundance of chilli. It was nicely decorated, but too hot for me.

The final verdict: I know I don’t give a high rating on this one, but this is actually the most affordable (and nice) Thai dishes you can get in town. I give a much higher rating for its Deep Fried Morning Glory. I think this dish was brilliant. I could not find any vegetable dish better than this one around the city (you can take out minced beef).

Did you know?

Thai restaurants are always infamous for their hospitality. I have yet to find a restaurant that disappoint me, in terms of waiters/waitresses’ politeness to customers. There are massive senses of modesty and it was really pleasant.

Location:

378 Pitt Street, Sydney, NSW 2000

Jun 3, 2011
Blue Ginger, South East Asian Cuisine

Rating:

8 / 10

Taste: 8.5 /10

Price: $35 – $50 per person

Place: 7.5/10

Review:

Blue Ginger has everything that I wanted in what South East Asian restaurant should be: Nice ambience, table setting that won’t let u kick your neighbour, and most importantly GREAT service – no grumpy old lady throwing plates on your table!

There are choices of Banquet menu that we chose not to have because we weren’t too sure about some of the selection. We ordered 1 appetiser, 5 main dishes, and 2 desserts. For the appetiser, it was Salt & pepper squid. Definitely not the best one Sydney has to offer and quite frankly quickly abolished my hope of having a great night.

We were made to wait for quite a while until the main course arrived but in the end all of them came at once – which was the most important feature of South East Asian dining experience. It didn’t take long before dim expectation turned into great experience.The slow braised black Angus beef short ribs (boneless) literally blew my mind away! Cut into bite sizes, the ribs were cooked to dry, glazed with special sauce and an optional cucumber relish and tamarind for an extra taste.

The next one I tasted was Crispy skin chicken Maryland. Equally yummy with its unique trait, really really crispy skin! The black vinegar dressing complemented the chicken really well.Then, the stir fried eggplant & pumpkin was made special with the addition of chilli black beans and young corns.

The next two dishes were my wife’s favourite. First one was Panang curry chicken. The curry was really smooth without any overpowering taste of the element. The second one was Stir fried Singaporean chilli prawns with snow peas. It was perfect for me due to the mild hotness of the chilli.

Considering none of the dishes were disappointing, we were tempted to try out their desserts. Our choices fell to two of the following:

–Panacotta with Palm Sugar and Pineapple Ice Cream

–Kaffir Lime Crème Brulee

In overall they were not mind blowing but more similar to Chat Thai with a Fusion to western desserts, with special credit to the Pineapple Ice cream.

The final verdict: Blue Ginger charged quite a premium price but it was by far the best (South East) Asian restaurant in Sydney! Even the desserts are much better than one-hat restaurant we went to. The short ribs were the highlight of the day, shockingly excluded from the Banquet menu! They were just simply beautiful…

Did you know?

There are some nice spots in Balmain to relax and unwind, all in walking distance. Some of the nicer ones: Great coffee in Bertoni, Adriano Zumbo’s infamous Croquembouche and Macaroons.

Location:

241 Darling St, Balmain NSW 2041

Website:

http://www.blueginger.com.au/

Jan 26, 2011