David Thompson’s Long Chim in Sydney: streets ahead with clever design

Who doesn’t love a glitter ball and cute nook in which to eat, well away from the rush of a restaurant’s main floor.

David Thompson’s latest eatery, Long Chim in Sydney.

Who doesn’t love a glitter ball and a cute nook in which to eat, well away from the rush of a restaurant’s main floor.

The design of Thai food expert David Thompson’s latest eatery, Long Chim in Sydney, is an inspired mix of long tables, dining bars with high seats and cosy tete-a-tete spaces. The dishes are based on Thai street cuisine, with plates to share, spicy and silky noodles to slurp, and a total lack of pretence.

Kelly Ross of The Gentry masterminded the decor and she refers to her creations as “immersive interiors”, a terrific label for the kind of welcoming and witty design that makes you think about where you are and appreciate the references to destination and culture. Her concept for the year-old Joe’s Bar at Canberra’s East Hotel, with its mix-and-match seating and little snugs, is the perfect showcase for the sensational fare of Italian chef Francesco, served from an open kitchen, preferably with a crazy cocktail such as a shiraz daiquiri made with Four Pillars Bloody Shiraz Gin, batch distilled and then steeped with Yarra Valley shiraz grapes. Joe’s is just about my favourite bar in Australia, by the way.

I am ancient enough to remember when going out for an Asian meal meant heading to a suburban or country Chinese restaurant. Dad would choose for the family, which meant a glutinous soup (“snot broth” we called it, behind his back, although it was rather delicious), then sweet and sour pork bulked out with onions, lemon chicken with so much MSG it made our heads spin, and fried rice followed by tinned lychees and vanilla ice cream. It would be knives and forks all round, never chopsticks, and bottles of beer for the adults and, for the kids, fizzy drinks in colours you could see from the moon (along with the Great Wall of China, appropriately).

Then came a local Indian cafe and the decor changed from scrolls of misty mountains and bamboo forests to Air India posters stuck up with masking tape and plastic models of the Taj Mahal that glowed red from within. We loved it all to bits.

Dad, who’s now causing havoc, no doubt, up in celestial realms, would be perplexed by the likes of Long Chim and its disco lighting and little stools, the lack of tablecloths and rough brick walls. “Couldn’t they afford carpet?” he would thunder. And then he’d add that you might as well just eat on the bloody streets.

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