'Thanon KhaoSan' - Pitt Street

Had a lunch voucher for this place so we decided to give a try on Friday afternoon to celebrate my mid term break. We often order from the Bondi branch and it's always good, so you can only imagine my delight when I saw that the city branches menu is twice the size and they also do lots of the Thai desserts, and even have a tuktuk in the restaurant... It felt like home!



I was squealing with glee and welling up a bit when I realised they had all my noodleshop lunch favourites: KHAO KHAA MOO, KHAO MOO DAENG, KHAO MUN GAI, GUAY TIEOW GAI, LOOK CHIN, KANOM JIIN ....wow! And even sangsom, although it's insanely overpriced.

I had the 'Khao khaa moo' (directly translates as = rice leg pig) one of my absolute favourites in Thailand and always a hit with friends when I brought them to my favourite noodle shop in Koh Chang ...it's a tender roast pork leg that comes served with all the fat in a sweet star anise gravy served with the usual pickled cabbage, steamed greens, spicy vinegar naam jiim (sauce) and half a boiled egg with rice on the side. It was pretty good... Tender, falling apart meat, loads of sweet blubbery fat (which I wouldn't usually eat but I made a pretty good attempt), and enough of the pickled cabbage and greens to last through most of the rice... อร่อยมาก!! $8.90

Gustin had the 'Khao moo daeng' (= rice pig red), which is another favourite of mine, it's a pork loin fillet that is roasted until the outside turns red (you often see this hanging up from a hook in a noodleshop glass cabinet and its also really good in bamee noodle soup with dumplings and 'hooa cha tao'**) The red pork is thinly sliced and served over rice with this sweet BBQ gravy, cucumber slices, half boiled egg, and bowl of broth - to my absolute delight the broth had 'hooa cha tao' in it which I convinced Augustine to let me have... Yessss. It was all pretty delishbags too but the meat was quite fatty and I was slightly disappointed that there was no sliced sweet Chinese sausage with it, as it's usually served in Thailand. $8.90 also (I think)

(Gustin was disgusted that they put 'half boiled egg' on the menu instead of 'half a boiled egg' and hours later he brought up the fact that he felt really swindled that they only gave him half an egg hahahah).

We also had some wontons with pork and some chicken wings to share and a couple of singhas and all in all it was a pretty impressive and will definitely be back for more of their noodleshop fare next time I'm in the city for lunch - although I was so full I couldn't drink much beer afterwards, I did manage to fit a Portuguese egg tart from the Chinese bakery a few doors down on Pitt Street.... YUMMMMMMM


** 'hooa cha tao' is like some kind of Asian turnip but I've only ever tried it in Thai noodle shops, they use it to make the broth and sometimes you get a chunk in your noodle soup which I consider a major treat! I don't know what the vegetable looks like uncooked though or what it's called in English so if anyone knows the stuff I mean, please message me because I would love to make noodle soup with it.

Location:Pitt street Sydney NSW 2000