Food of All Nations

Thai La-Ong September 15, 2008

A different kitchen setup to usual

While we’re desperately trying to catch up on the places we’ve been to over the past couple of weeks we’ve been “calling” the places we’re going to review.  Aivy got Mamak since we both decided she was better placed to comment on the authenticity, I called this particular place because of my personal views on the quality of Thai restaurants in Newtown.

For those of you who don’t know Newtown is a suburb just slightly south and slightly west of Sydney CBD.  It’s right next to the University of Sydney (where my lovely sister-in-law works, hello Maggie!) and is about a 20 minute walk, or a short train ride, away from Central Station.  It’s well known for it’s vast array of trendy little stores and complete absence of shopping centres.

Along the main traffic arteries of King Street and Enmore Road you’ll find stores for clothes, footware, books, pets and other miscellany.  You’ll also find a bevy of places to indulge your stomach or whet your whistle.  It is well known amongst Sydney locals that Newtown has the highest concentration of Thai restaurants anywhere in Sydney, there’ll be a future blog post about exactly how many we can find 🙂

With that little bit of background let us now move on to the night itself.  Aivy, our friends Adeline (above pictured right), Belinda (next to Adeline) and Lisa (the hand on the left) and myself had been to Kuleto’s for some cocktails.  We were in need of some sustenance so Lisa suggested a Thai place that she really likes, Thai La-Ong.

Thai La-Ong is located at 89 King St, Newtwon, just a short walk up the road from Kuleto’s.  It was pretty busy by the time we got there at 8.00 and we were fairly lucky to get a table for six people straight away.

One of the first things that I noticed when I sat down was the layout of the restaurant is a bit different to a lot of places.  There’s a big eating area out the front which is right next to a very open cooking area, it adds quite a bit to the noise level and means you’ll be speaking up a bit and can make discussions in a group a bit tricky.

Dishes

We had a look around the menu and decided on four dishes and some rice:

First up Pad Khee Mao:

Stir fried thick rice noodle with chicken and vegetables in a spicy, thick sauce.  I could have sworn I tasted peanuts but Aivy disagreed.  It had enough chilli in it that we could taste it, but it was quite mild by our standards.  Not bad.

Next Red Duck Curry:

And this is where it starts to go all wrong…

Aplogoies for the bluriness of the photo but believe me you’re not missing anything.  Red Duck Curry is a dish that both Aivy and I enjoy immensely, however this just failed to even get going.  The sauce was thin and quite bland, the vegetable choice was a bizzare pick’n’ mix selection and the duck itself was pretty “meh”.

The arrival of the dish led us to pondering exactly what it was we had ordered…Guys, please, when you order red duck curry you expect it to be red.  Not yellow, not beige-ish brown, red.

Is this what we ordered?

Can it get worse?  Sadly yes…Dish number three, Prawn Green Curry:

Um…Well…I think it was supposed to be green.  The sauce was bland, the papya was bland and the prawns were bland as well as being poorly cooked.  The prawns were much too firm for prawns that are supposed to be cooked for a curry.

And now, for the finale….oh dear…

We’re not sure…We can’t remember exactly what the dish was called so we’ll dub it Tofu-Vegetable Satay thingy:

To be fair it didn’t look this unappealing at the restaurant, but looking at it now I feel the photo makes it look like a baby has vomited over a vegetarian stir-fry.  The sauce tasted so-so but I’ve had much richer tasting satay sauces before, there was just not enough of a peanut taste.

The thing that was the big problem with this dish was the tofu, the skin was rubbery and the insides only slightly better.  At one point I watched Lisa repeatedly jabbing the same but of Tofu trying to get it on to her fork only for the tines not to penetrate the outer skin.  I know tofu comes in a number of different types and there are innumerable different ways of cooking it (mmmm, Mapo Doufu / 麻婆豆腐), but this isn’t one of them.

Price

The one mitigating factor in all this is that Thai La-Ong is cheap.  For the four dishes and two servings of rice it cost about $50.  Mains are between about $8 and $12, Entrées are around $6.

Conclusion

Other than what I’ve detailed above there was one other main problem with the meals, that being the presentation.  The food is chucked on the plate without care or deliberation, the Tofu dish being the primary example but a look at the curries shows the same thing.

A good indicator of how much we’re enjoying the food at a Thai restaurant is by how much sauce is left in the dishes that we’re eating.  If the food is really good we’ll use rice to soak up all the sauce and chow down on that.  When we all stopped eating the Pad Khee Mao was the only dish that was completely finished, with both curries and the tofu dish only being half eaten.

Maybe I’m being a bit harsh on the place but with the range of good eating options available in Newtown there is something for every budget, and something for every taste, that is good.  When I’m in Newtown I expect good, tasty, food, which something that Thai La-Ong fails to deliver.

(Please note: in all fairness Lisa still likes the place)