Thailander, Lonsdale St and Dessert Story, Lt Bourke St Melbourne

Thailander is a fairly new and fairly hip Thai place in the CBD. There are two on them in the city, one on Little Collins and the one we went to, on Lonsdale.

Walking in the fit out was quite nice and well thought out, obviously targeted at a Melbourne audience. We were initially a bit confused as to whether we would be getting table service or whether we were to order at the counter as there was someone serving the counter with a 'order here' sign but also a couple of service staff buzzing around serving the tables. We got our answer when one of them came to take our order.

Our table of four went for a main each and a couple of things to share. To share we got some roti and chicken satay sticks. The satay sticks were pretty nice, decently charry and a nice satay sauce to accompany it. I liked that sticky rice came with the satay sticks but thought they were a bit undercooked and hard. The, however, roti was just plain disappointing. A good roti should be flaky and frankly quite oily whereas this one was doughy and not all flaky, more like an unleavened bread than a flaky pastry.

For mains, M and I chose the crispy pork belly with red curry paste and the pad thai in an egg blanket ($15 each). We love Thai style crispy pork belly which is first deep fried then stir fried in various ways. This dish was very tasty with the aromatic curry paste and the beans which were the perfect accompaniment with rice. However, the pad thai in the egg blanket was a lot more disappointing. The omelette was oily and uninteresting and the pad thai had similar faults: greasy, soggy and not at all charry. As usual with my Thai meals, I got also got a milk tea. Although this one was more generous in size than other Thai iced teas out there, I felt it had a little too much milk and needed a bit more of the fragrant Ceylon tea flavour that makes Thai iced teas so amazing.

Dessert Story
After dinner, we wanted to kick on so headed nearby to Chinatown to get some dessert. While one of us went for a dessert, the rest of us went for just some liquid and icy. M, being the coffee fiend that he is, went for an iced coffee. He described it as 'terrible', saying that it somehow tasted worse than instant and exceedingly unpleasant. There was also no cream or ice cream in sight. I went for a some winter melon bubble tea, a great favourite of mine. It tasted pretty good, but the problem with both mine and M's drinks were that they were barely iced. I went up to the counter to ask for some ice, got a pregnant pause and a few strange looks, after which they gave me half a seemingly dirty bowl of shaved ice. Not exactly what we were looking for and the fineness of the shaved ice did little to cool our drinks on that hot night.