Bianca's Food Catwalk - Sydney Food and Fashion Blog: Home Thai - 299 Sussex Street, Sydney CBD/Chinatown end

As you know Sydney is filled with an abundant array of Thai restaurants. My first post was about "House" Thai which served different traditional food from the north eastern part of Thailand. But this post is about "Home" Thai, serving up more well known Thai dishes but served up in a cracking deliciously awesome way, so that's why we chose this place to catch up with our visiting friend who has really missed good Thai food after living in London for the past 3 years.

Home does take bookings, but it books up fast so if you missed out, you just rock up, write your name on the list and the number of people you have, which is stuck to the glass door and then rip off your paper number and wait for it to be called. We had 7 people and waited for about 10 minutes aftter arriving at 6:20pm on a Friday night. There were lots of people rocking up by then but it seemed to move fast. At first I was like where are the waiters . . but then I realised that the bags across their bodies were ipad holders which was how they took all the orders! Service is fast and efficient. Open kitchen for the people waiting, a very good idea.

Ok, so I totally forgot to take photos of all of the entrees. Pictured is the last piece of the Thai sausage and the steamed dumplings. This is what we ate:

FRESH SPRING ROLL $8.90 Fresh spring rolls wrapped with crab meat, cucumber, tofu, bean sprouts, egg, Chinese sausage served with sweet tamarind sauce: The freshness was there and all the inside ingredients were good but the sweet tamarind sauce was overpowering and made it all too sweet. If you order this I suggest asking for the sauce to be on the side. 5.5/10

PLA HED (FISH CAKE) $7.90 Deep fried red fish blended with red chili paste and herbs served with cucumber, peanut, onion and chili sauce: Was a great fish cake, nice and spicy and not too rubbery. 8/10

KUI CHAY (4 PCS) $4.90 Steamed dumplings stuffed with garlic chive: Ok a bit soggy, leave the dumplings to the Chinese :) 6/10

SAI GROOG ISAN $10.90 A homemade Thai sausage traditionally from the eastern part of Thailand grilled and served with fresh ginger and vegetable: I never had this before and it was very tasty especially with the crispy sheet of pastry wrapped around it. 8/10

For mains we had:

LARB NAM TOK BEEF $10.90 Grilled medium cooked beef with shallot, coriander, mint, long leaf coriander, grind rice, chili powder and chef’s dressing: The waitress told us it was quite hot, so we asked for mild. But it was still quite hot. Tasty nevertheless, one of the better beef salads I've had. The beef was cooked to perfection and not chewy at all. 8.5/10

PAD PIK KHING $13.90 Stir fried crispy pork belly with chili, lime leaf, green bean and pik khing sauce: I chose this one as I wanted to compare it to Spice I Am's version. It was really good and bursting with the chilli hotness and fatty pork goodness! This version is a saucier, not as dry as Spice I Am's, so really it is up to personal taste. The pork is still really crunchy but the pieces are smaller so on that point only it loses out to it's competitor! 9/10 (Spice I Am's = 10/10)

PAD THAI WOON SEN $10.50 A traditional Thai wok tossed noodle dish with vermicelli, chicken, egg & a tamarind sauce. Served with fresh lemon, peanuts & bean sprouts: We had the chicken version and it was a pretty good Pad Thai. Not to wet or dry and I really liked how they put the peanuts on the side, I don't like it when they are in the noodle already. 7.5/10

PAD SEE EW $10.50 Fresh rice sheet noodles wok tossed in a soy sauce with prawns. This was a friends dish, I didn't taste this but it looked great, the prawns were nice and big. For some reason this pic uploaded portrait and I can't rotate it!

GANG DANG $12.90 Red curry paste with coconut milk, cherry eggplant, apple eggplant, basil, lime leaf and long red chilli: We had chicken gang dang and it was a solid hot curry, like Panang but probably less sweet which I like. There were small boneless chicken bits, not chicken with bones, so therefore a little less flavour. But I guess you will always have that seeing as this is a curry where you can choose your protein. It's still a great tasting curry, so I give it 9/10.