Thai Riffic


Posh [Posh][Posh]

Nosh [Nosh][Nosh]

Slosh [Slosh][Slosh]

Gosh! [Gosh!][Gosh!][Gosh!]

So How Good's The Food? [Good][Good]

DM Repeat Visit Rating [DM]

  • Thai Riffic
  • Modern Thai.
  • 9-11 Falcon St, Crows Nest
  • Phone:
This is a newly renovated establishment that used to be a furniture store. From the street it looks great, with inviting low tables with cushions out by the street in front of a beaded curtain that hides an enticing dark wood-toned interior. It's large, with about 70 tables inside, and the atmosphere is nice, although a bit noisy because of the size and the hard, sound-bouncing floor and walls. The kitchen is along one side of the room, with multiple chefs cooking in full view and occasional enormous leaps of flame lighting up the place.

Unfortunately, it's all eye-candy with little substance behind it. Firstly, the tables are dreadful. There are few eating establishments where I've had occasion to complain about the furniture, but this one tops the list. The tables are low and have a shelf under them that means you can't stretch your legs out, but need to keep them tucked under your chair to avoid constantly banging your shins into them.

Secondly, the waitresses look hip and trendy in a uniform of casual brown shirt and blue jeans, and there are many of them, but they seem to spend more time chatting with each other than serving customers, leaving us with a significant wait for our order to be taken and for our bill when done. On the bill, the food is moderately expensive, not bank-breaking, but certainly not the budget to mid-range prices we prefer. And they disdained our Amercian Express card too.

Once ordered though, the food arrived reasonably quickly, and was a treat for the eyes. We had a vegetarian Pad Pak and the duck with plum sauce. They were served on huge platters, and were reasonably generous, but most notable for being crafted to look great. The stir-fried veges were glistening and colourful, and left in large chunks, including some enormous whole shiitake mushrooms. The duck was sliced into more than bite-sized sections and garnished with generous sprinkles of whole star anise and the three biggest cinnamon sticks I've ever seen - literally almost a foot long each. While the spices are important, a single smaller cinnamon stick could have achieved the same job tastewise for probably about $5 less! Still, it did look fantastic.

The taste was good too, though probably not quite up there with what I'd expect for the price. And the difficult thing was that they served these dishes with jasmine rice and chopsticks as the only provided eating utensil - neither authentically Thai nor practical for the dishes we had. Much of our food needed cutting or biting into smaller pieces before we could eat it. Either chopping it smaller during the cooking process or providing a knife and fork would have been better.

Overall, a disappointing performance by a restaurant that pleases the eye more than the body. Still, it looked very popular and we overheard others saying they'd been back three times, so it must appeal to somebody.


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Last updated: Friday, 10 March, 2006; 16:33:26 PST.
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