Sunday, March 30, 2008

RESTAURANT: Chonsiam

Type: Thai
Location: Campbell St, Sydney (between Pitt ST and Castlereagh St)
Booking Required: Not at this stage

Okay, so after deciding not to brave out the Spice I Am 45 minute wait we stumbled into this place, too purple to ignore.

The first that you notice after you get over the purple is that they have this awesome sofa seat sort of thing. It's really awesome and really sticks out. I think that's a fantastic thing for a "fun" restaurant to have. We had only been there 10 minutes before a group came in and said "bags the sofa!" rather excitedly.

We then found out that this was actually the opening night of the restaurant so, regrettably, around a third of the menu was unavailable. But that's okay.

We started with the BBQ chicken salad. An interesting mix of barbequed chicken, tomato, lettuce (or cabbage) and a few other things. It was an interesting dish, almost more Vietnamese in style. Not bad, but the combination of ingredients was lacking a little harmony for me, and the sauce hadn't fully penetrated the chicken. But I did like that you could taste the elements of the dish, rather than just the one dominating flavour that seems to happen at a lot of other Thai places.

Second to arrive was the jungle curry. I'm not normally a fan of this curry and this didn't convert me. I won't judge too harshly since it isn't in my tastes, but again the flavours didn't seem to harmonise enough. The beef was a bit tough as well.

The final, and most successful, dish was the beef nam tok (beef salad). Always a nice combination of beef, basil, onion and a few other ingredients in a citrusy sauce. It was damn spicy, but also quite nice.

Because this was opening night I won't criticise too heavily, but there are quite a lot of kinks that will need to be ironed out before I visit again in 2-3 weeks to see what the progress has been like.

RATING: Pending. See it for yourself and see what you think of this new Thai place.

Chonsiam on Urbanspoon

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