New adventurous, authentic Thai eatery has real fire power

This new suburban spin-off for one of Adelaide’s best-know Asian restaurants captures authentic street food flavours, writes Simon Wilkinson. Find out where and what to order.

A selection of authentic Thai dishes from The Thai Guy. Picture: supplied

A wander through the markets and laneways of old Bangkok can be challenging for those of delicate disposition.

The crowds … the noise … the smells … the suffocating heat of a roaring wok burner or glowing charcoal grill.

But this dizzying assault on the senses is distilled into the intense flavours of the charred chicken skewers or the smoky, spicy bowl of noodles. There really is nothing else like it.

That is the starting point for The Thai Guy, a hole-in-the-wall eatery in Kensington Park that offers a deeper and more adventurous take on this popular cuisine than you’ll find anywhere else in the suburbs.

The Thai Guy in question, it transpires, is Terry Intarakhamhaeng, the former Buddhist monk and tour guide from the northeast of Thailand, who began working in a kitchen when he moved to Adelaide.

He is best known for his restaurant Soi 38, where the cooking and decor have a level of sophistication befitting its CBD location.

This simpler spin-off feels more personal – and not just because his alter-ego can be seen piloting the tuktuk in the mural on the wall outside, as well as on the staff T-shirts.

Intarakhamhaeng lives just a few blocks away, so he is serving his own community. And this kind of street food is also closer to what he would be eating day-to-day when returning to Thailand.

A selection of food from The Thai Guy. Picture: supplied

The Thai Guy’s green curry chicken. Picture: supplied

The former burger joint half way up Magill Rd has been transformed in the style of a Bangkok shanty diner, the ceiling stripped back to reveal rafters and iron sheeting and the brickwork of the main wall painted in green and white layers and displaying personal memorabilia.

The existing kitchen, more importantly, has been updated with extra fire power.

That is reflected in a menu in which the most substantial departure from the standard snack/salad/stir-fry/curry suburban Thai formula is the selection of charcoal skewers, from chicken satay with toasted white bread (a childhood memory) to more adventurous octopus tentacle and tamarind.

The beef choice is somewhere between, with strips of rump cap threaded on a bamboo stick, grilled until the raggedy edges are blackened and served with a dish of smoky, spicy eggplant relish and a final sprinkle of dried chilli and rice powder.

Slabs of steamed radish cake are brushed with a mix of soy, vinegar and palm sugar as they grill, the glaze turning into a sticky, intense savoury toffee.

More of the sauce is poured over once on the plate and this unlikely triumph is the thing we are talking about later.

The skewers are dropped off at the same time as other snack-sized bits and pieces such as juicy corn kernel fritters with a sweet chilli sauce that is nothing like the cloying commercial gloop, and an unusual deep-fried (rather than pan-fired) roti with curry sauce for dipping.

Betel leaves and a selection of diced fillings are arranged on a platter to make DIY miang.

Choose a protein – prawn, pork or deep-fried tofu – and then experiment to find the right balance of dried shrimp, peanuts, onion, capsicum, lime pieces (essential) and a sauce of palm sugar, coconut and chilli jam.

Inside The Thai Guy; the former burger joint half way up Magill Rd has been transformed in the style of a Bangkok shanty diner. Picture supplied

The stir-fries, such as pork belly and peppery holy basil, are tossed out of the wok and on to a ferociously hot cast iron plate so they can be bought sizzling to the table.

An egg is cracked on there as well and picks up all the blackened residue of soy and oyster sauces in its lacy white.

A surprisingly bland rendition of the green papaya, cherry tomato and snake bean salad known as some tum is the only real let-down.

There’s certainly no lack of power in a green chicken curry loaded with strips of skin-on thigh fillet and small Thai eggplant in a sauce that is really more dark-mustard than green in colour.

Made with a paste containing little-used ingredients such as wild ginger (krachai) and plenty of lime leaves, it is infinitely more complex than the coconut-heavy preparations seen elsewhere.

Desserts are all frozen confections such as an overly sweet pineapple sorbet topped with the pickled fruit, mint and chilli.

They’d be better sticking with a variety of whatever fresh fruit is in season. Just like you’d find at the market.

The Thai Guy will be sizzling skewers on a charcoal barbecue in Town Square as part of Tasting Australia, Victoria Square/Tarntanyangga until May 12