Hot

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday June 26, 2008

Guy Griffin

A fresh new Thai restaurant in a busy precinct caters for both the true believers and mainstream tastes, writes Guy Griffin.

My city of Sydney I miss your glow at dark. And we miss you Tommy Leonetti, and all the great lounge acts of nightclubs past. "Big" Norm Erskine at the Latin Quarter, Ricky May slayin' them at El Rocco, lanky yank Don Lane, and the late, louche Frances Faye. Like the El Alamein fountain I come over all misty when I'm up at the Cross. The big marquee names are working one last room in the back of my mind.

Tonight, I've taken the long way down the neon throat of Macleay Street in the direction of new Thai restaurant Oy. The working girls are winking, the bikers are drinking and slow-moving cars clog the street. There's a scent of beer and greasy pizza on the breeze. This is an anti-prissy precinct that Clover Moore once wanted to remake as "a mother-and-child-friendly zone". Oh puhlease.

The El Alamein fountain marks the border between the X-rated Cross and the "Paris option" of bourgeois, residential Potts Point. Oy is a niche in the wall at the Paris end, sharing billing with some crowd-pulling names in Sydney dining such as Fratelli Paradiso, Lotus, Yellow and Arun Thai. Interior designers Burley Katon Halliday have created a long sliver of a room with wall-to-wall green tiles. The antiseptic look makes for an amusing contrast with the scruffy vibe up the road.

From her long open kitchen, the beatific Krongthong Akkichitto (ex-Sailors Thai) sends out dishes in the style of Bangkok's hawker and market food. At lunch the menu also takes some cues from her home region of Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand. Like most of Sydney's best Thai chefs, Akkichitto has to walk the culinary tightrope between authenticity and popularity. So at Oy there's something to please everyone.

I'm prowling the changing menu for dishes that take sweet, sour, salty and hot accents to the limit. When I'm in this mood I usually make a beeline for Spice I Am. But my dining companion, the Midnight Cowboy, is suffering from that debilitating 24-hour affliction, the Kings Cross hangover, so he's calling for something more forgiving.

Some dishes at Oy are familiar and comforting: grilled fish cakes wrapped around sugar cane, served with a sweet chilli dipping sauce; and betel leaves cradling a grilled scallop that's just firm enough to the bite, dressed with roasted coconut, chilli, lime, ginger and peanut sauce. Good, simple, a bit dull. The excitement amps up with a lovely whole steamed flounder that flakes with the nudge of a fork, paired with funky ginger and sour plum sauce. Now that's more like it.

Then, an exhilarating dish of deep-fried rice balls with chilli paste, ground chicken and peanuts, dressed with lime and chilli. A perfectly calibrated balance of flavours and textures in the traditional Thai way, it screams "signature dish". Another regional entry on our menu is the spicy northern Thai dish, larb. Akkichitto makes it with minced chicken or duck or sometimes salmon, and serves it with raw vegetables.

The Midnight Cowboy enjoys his deep-fried marinated pork ribs in a spicy and sour sauce, although at one point he drawls to no one in particular: "Eat 'em quick before they turn to fly paper." He's nothing if not honest. A couple of glossy fashion ragsters at the next table are loving a stock-based red curry with roasted duck that the chef has adapted from northern Thailand's Tai Yai (Shan) cuisine.

I usually feel trapped by brief wine lists but Oy's selection of eight whites and five reds is smart and interesting. Importantly, some nice, wine-savvy person has found wines that are compatible with Thai food, such as 2007 O'Leary Walker Blue Cutting Road Semillon Sauvignon Blanc, from the Clare Valley.

Oy is a clever blend of the unexpected and the familiar. There's enough variety here to keep both the Thai food true believers and a more generic audience happy. Yes, all well and good, but where's the fabulous floor show after dinner?

Oy

71A Macleay Street, Potts Point.

Phone: 9361 4498.

Licensed.

All major cards.

Open for lunch (except Mondays) 12pm-3pm; dinner 6pm-10pm.

Entrees $5, mains $23-$36, desserts $10.

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

Back to News Index | Back to Home