Friday, April 19, 2013

House Restaurant

House Restaurant operates under the Spice I Am umbrella but unlike the main Spice I Am branch, House offers cuisine from the traditional area of Isaan in North Eastern Thailand. It was my first taste of North Eastern Thai food and was little unsure of what to expect.

We tried two types of salad. The Yum Pla Mueg ($14.00), which is a calamari salad with celery, coriander, shallots and onion, served with chilli and lime dressing had a lovely tangy twist due to the lime. Thumbs up.


I got to order the Larb Ped ($18.00), a traditional Isaan salad of minced duck with eschalots, shallots, Vietnamese coriander, mint, ground roasted rice, ground chilli and lime. The combination of coriander and mint, ah... Thumbs up.


The dish that appealed to me the least but found most interesting was the Aorm Gai ($14.00), a chicken curry with dill, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaf, galangal, garlic, eschalots, shallots, Thai eggplant, pumpkin, Thai lemon basil and choy sum. Too many different flavours going on in there for me. Very rich dish, nevertheless.


We also ordered two dishes off their specials menu. There was a tofu dish (forgive me for I failed to note the name and price of both dishes) and a green curry beef dish.



We saved space for dessert and oreder two out of the three they had on their menu. The ais kacang looking Nam Kaeng Sai ($5.00) is a Thai style shaved ice dessert with sweet potato, sweet taro, pineapple and toddy palm seed topped with Thai caramel sauce and coconut milk. Wonder if the caramel sauce they meant was palm sugar (gula Melaka). Ice shaving was too hard for my liking.


The better dessert was the one with the kinkier name - BTS, which stood for Better Than Sex ($15.00). A toasted brioche served with pandan coconut gelato topped with Thai caramel sauce and sprinkled with roasted black and white sesame seeds. Brioche was melt in your mouth. Thumbs up.


As there is a bar inside, they do not allow BYO and similar to the other popular Thai places, they do not take reservations. However, with a sum of $110 (for 5 of us, which isn't too bad), not being able to pay by card was a little annoying.

House on Urbanspoon

House Restaurant
202 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills, NSW 2010
Tel: +61 2 9280 0364, E-mail: info@spiceiam.com
Open daily 11:30am till Late

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