As a lover of Thai cuisine, I must confess I struggle to find truly amazing Thai food in Melbourne.
I blame it on an amazing culinary trip to Thailand a few years back where every single meal I had was ridiculously, orgasmicaly good, from street food to fine dining restaurants. The zest and zing of Thai food in Oz is just not the same.
So in my 'incessant search' for the perfect aussie Thai restaurant, I recently gave my local Ladyboy Dining a go with a few friends.
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| fish cakes + crispy thai basil + sweet chilli ($12) |
The place is pretty chilled out and service is very much suburban cafe style - order and pay at the bar, help yourself to water and crockery. This setting sounded a bit odd and too low key to me for a place charging a fair bit for their food.
Hubby took a good 20min standing in line to order our food as the bar staff was trying to make cocktails, serve food and put the orders through all at the same time.
Things actually rand smooth once our orders went through. It was good to have four of us eating together so that we could order quite a few things from the menu to try.
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| salt & pepper silken tofu + chilli jam + herbs ($16) |
The highlight dish of the night was (surprisingly!) the fried silken tofu. Perfectly crispy on the outside and smooth inside. The sauce was a true Thai explosion of flavour without being overly spicy.
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| rice paper roll with cooked kingfish + wakame + vietnamese mint ($6 ea) |
My friends also liked the king fish rice paper rolls, although mine was a bit dry.
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| crispy pork hock + black vinegar caramel + fried shallots ($20) |
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| green curry + chicken + apple eggplant + banana chilli ($26) |
The curry wasn't as thick as I'd have liked, but it was definitely tasty. I had quite a bit of this.
My friend and I love fresh fish and we were looking forward to try the house cured trout salad. Hubby is not a fan of seafood on the other hand, and chose the chicken salad.
I actually ended up eating more of the chicken salad then the trout out. The combination of flavours and textures was much more interesting here, and the salad was very refreshing.
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| chicken salad + wombok + sour pomelo + red nahm jim ($21) |
The asian slaw on the other hand was heavy with mayo and too oily for my taste, despite the actual house cured trout being really good.
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| house-cured ocean trout + asian slaw + crispy rice paper ($20) |
We ordered way to much food and didn't manage to finish it all, let alone look at dessert. It was good getting a chance to try quite a few of the menu items though, and there are a few things that I would certainly come back to Ladyboy Dining.
Hubby however, said there is no way he is coming back given the service was so poor. Lucky me who got to sit back and sip my cocktail while chatting away while hubby was trying to get our orders through :)
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