Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Kitsch Bar (Thai), 229 Oxford Street, Leederville: good food, great value!

Tuesday, 14 September 2010:
A little touch of Melbourne chic comes to Leederville, in the form of Kitsch bar right next door to the RE Store on Oxford Street.  It's a thai restaurant with a funky modern twist.  I liken it to a mini version of Gingerboy in Melbourne (and that's high praise indeed), albeit more casual and relaxed.

Tuesday night was the Phad Thai and Chang beer night.  The phad thai (always a barometer of the quality of a Thai restaurant) wasn't dry like I expected. There was actually quite a bit of juicy sweet and sour gravy lubricating the rice noodles.  Different but tasty, although there may have been just a bit too much lime - I found myself involuntarily making a lime-sucking face at a couple of points through the meal.  The Chang beer, from Thailand, was an easy to drink, crisp and refreshing lager, and went down well with the phad thai.  Sam ordered the deep fried salmon salad, and that looked really nice.  Whilst deep fried, the salmon didn't seem overcooked.

I'm not a fan of a sweet dessert (I know I keep saying this but appear to always order a sweet dessert, but I'm not a fan - really!), but couldn't help ordering the intriguing tapioca pearls and pandan icecream.  Wow it was nice cornucopia of texture (from the chewy pearls), flavour (I'll elaborate later) and aroma (from the delicately pandan scented ice cream), and beautifully presented to boot!  The flavour was underlaid by palm sugar hiding at the bottom of the glass, but the real sleeper was the unexpected saltiness!  Sweet and salty - a superb yin and yang combination indeed.  Anzhela and Gihan both ordered the choc ice cream sandwich with peanut brittle (Gihan because he wasn't game enough to tackle the texturous tapioca - what is up with that?!), and they reckoned it was the bee's knees.  I'm sticking to my tapioca, which I didn't offer to share with anyone.

The service was attentive, plentiful, enthusiastic and friendly, from a young crew.  Although I got my dessert shot of Patron XO Cafe Espresso tequila (rich coffee flavoured top shelf tequila - sip, not scull!) long after all of us had scoffed down our desserts, I no complain.  We had a great time, even though my dinner company failed to appreciate the delights of St John in London which I tried to describe to them - Brands and Yoko, I hope you guys had a chance to eat there this week (yumm pig ears terrine, crispy deep fried pig tails, sweet boiled heirloom carrots ... even Neil Perry's Rockpool has adopted the last one!)

And the price?  $36 all up for a main, beer, dessert (and including a $12.50 shot of tequila)!  What a bloody bargain.

Check it: http://www.kitschbar.com.au/

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