Restaurant Review: Chat Thai, Haymarket

Chat Thai, oh how I love you.

I visited my favourite Thai restaurant for lunch on Sunday for the first time in ages. The staff have replaced their usual Som Tum Lover t-shirts (anyone know if I can buy one of those?), with brightly coloured numbers celebrating the restaurant's 20th year.

We had a waitress that has served me before and there was a glint of recognition as I launched into my pigeon Thai. She smiled sweetly and we got all of the food we ordered, so I can't have been too bad. (I did have to drop into Thi-nglish for one dish as I didn't know all of the vocab.)

During the busy lunch time we were sharing our table with another party. They ordered before us, and were a bit miffed when all our food arrived first. I like to think they were giving priority service to Thai's!

 I ordered crispy pork rice (ขา้ว หมู กรอบ) which I fell in love with at my local Thai street stall back in Bangkok. A mix of crispy pork belly, BBQ pork and Chinese sausage served with a sweet sticky sauce on rice. I'm a big fan of the contrast in flavours and textures that you get with this dish. It's frustrating to pay sixteen times the price that I did in Bangkok, but it still wasn't bad value at $8.90.

In addition to the obligatory Som Tum (ส้มตำ) we decided to try something new and ordered the star dish of lunch Sukho Thai noodles (สุโข ทัย). The signature dish of a northern province, is a concoction of noodles in a spicy chicken broth served with pork loin, fish balls, fermented tofu and some vegetables.

This was my final meal out before the marathon. I'm now on home cooked carbo and protein loading before the weekend!