Your Thai Rice & Noodle Bar

Your Thai Rice & Noodle Bar

255 Swanston St, Melbourne

(Ph) 9663 8010

☆☆☆

At first I was so shocked to see this restaurant in the Cheap Eats Guide, let alone have ☆☆☆! It seems like one of those cheapo crappy Swanston St restaurants we used to go to as a uni student. I haven't tried this restaurant before though - I've always wanted to 'cause the menu looks so colourful on the walls but P always wants to go to the Vietnamese restaurant next door. And after yesterday's failed Thai experience - I really wanted to have some genuine Thai food =)

We knew we wanted to get Pad Thai and maybe a curry or something - searched the whole menu twice and we were shocked we couldn't find Pad Thai on it! Turns out they call it "Phat Thai" here - lol wth =P

Chicken Phat Thai

Tasted just like normal Phat Thai! =) Dunno what it is but last time when we tried to make pad thai at home with those "Asian Meals at Home" sauce packs - it was terrible, wasn't like pad thai at all (the noodles were soggy and our sauce was a bit too sour or something =/). So I was craving genuine pad thai and we got it here :D Though I don't know why they don't cook the bean sprouts here though - it's raw and you just mix it in yourself. And thank goodness they put the chilli bits separate or I would have hated this place as well (re Cookie). I wish they don't make chicken pad thai's with chicken breasts though - chicken thighs would have skyrocketed this dish =P And I don't know why but we ALWAYS order chicken pad thai, I don't even know what beef pad thai tastes like - should really order that next time!

P was tossing between ordering a Chicken Claypot dish or the Shrimp Paste Fried Rice. On the menu it looks very interesting with so many different parts to the dish (see below) - so we decided against the typical Chinese chicken claypot dish.

The actual dish looked a bit different... lol.

Your Thai Shrimp Paste Fried Rice

After we ordered it we realised this dish was probably more Malaysian than Thai - oh well :P It wasn't very aesthetically pleasing - the fried egg looks quite fail haha. The shrimp paste rice didn't really taste like shrimp paste - it looks and tastes like Vietnamese tomato rice, but it was quite tasty mixed with the stir fried pork and chicken mince with mushrooms. I actually think the shrimp paste was fried with the mince, maybe that's what it was - either way it was quite a nice combination. P really liked the fried strips of spam - he keeps saying how crap spam is but here he is enjoying it haha - I knew I could eventually convince him enough to like all my favourite foods :D He said it reminds him of those wrapped cured sausages you can get in Asia which I totally don't agree with but I give up arguing with him over spam :P

We ordered a Satay Chicken entree which came a few minutes after our mains came hmmm =P

Satay Chicken

Very tasty but I don't think it was worth $7 for the 3 skewers though - I really love the peanut satay sauce. Every time I try to make it at home it's such a fail =( and we were thinking we could make our own chicken skewers by roasting the chicken over our gas stove - P's idea, which I think will be very stupid and successful.

Anyway back to this restaurant - bill ended up to be $25.80. Very reasonable - we were soo full afterwards! Though they don't take card here - dodgy asians haha.

Next time I want a cheap Swanston St meal will definitely come back here =)

8/10

C.
xo