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Something wicked and wonderful has arrived in the form of 
Chat Thai restaurants, writes Nick Dent.
On a god-awful Sunday night in the city, the rain tapping your shoulders like a boring acquaintance you can’t seem to shake off, the streets are unusually quiet. But there’s a commotion happening in Haymarket. Not, as you might expect, outside the Capitol Theatre, but across the road from the Billy Elliot juggernaut – at Chat Thai.
It says a lot about a place when punters are prepared to write their names on a clipboard and wait it out on the pavement in the drizzle. Tonight I’ve recklessly arrived with a party of seven, which means we can order a bigger range of dishes, but I’m worried about the wait for a large table. Amazingly, it’s only half an hour – hardly enough time for a beer and a perve on the talent at a nearby backpacker bar.
There are actually four Chat Thais. Amy Chanta has opened outlets in Randwick, Manly and the Galeries Victoria. A Thai expat, Chanta is part of the burgeoning trend towards more authentic Sydney Thai food – which means lots of chilli, lime juice and punchy flavours, not the homogenised Thai of your bog-standard Sydney restaurant with a punny name.
First dish to arrive is a rich Mu Pad Prik Khing ($12) – very tender sliced pork loin with a spicy paste of roasted chilli and galangal (a kind of ginger), tossed with green beans. When you eat this you realise that sweet chilli does not necessarily mean gentle chilli.
The Bpla Lard Prik ($24) delights us. A whole snapper, its flesh crisp-fried, is covered in a chunky scarlet sauce of roasted chilli, garlic, palm sugar and kaffir lime leaves. Chilli fried rice ($12) is a lip-smacking meal in itself, and while the larb gai ($10) is a fairly generic larb, it has a stronger jolt of heat than you’d expect.
Bla Muek Yang ($12) – that squid you can see them char grilling in the window – is soft, not chewy, sliced into bite-size shell shapes, and served with a tangy lime sauce. Kor Moo Yang ($12) is pork neck with nahm-jim jaew (a relish of ground rice, roast chillies, tamarind essence, tomato and sugar). It’s another winner.
You can sense if a Thai restaurant is serious or not by the dessert menu. If they have the real Asian stuff like juicy mango slices with sweet, coconutty glutinous rice, or a sesame fried banana – as Chat Thai does – then they’re far more likely to be pushing the envelope over the whole menu.
Campbell Street’s fitout is quite architectural, fancy even, with exposed brickwork and wooden beams. You might expect a fancy price to go with it. Why, then, did we leave with full bellies having paid only $20 a head including a tip? No wonder there’s so many hot backpackers hanging around.
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