Thai On Street

October 16, 2011

Our carefully planned Saturday evening was thrown off course when we discovered the closure of Merri Table at CERES. We headed back towards Lygon Street, falling back on Thai On Street, a restaurant that had been on our list since it opened about a year ago. It's definitely found its place on the East Brunswick strip - we squeezed into one of the few unbooked tables and spent most of our meal watching people being turned away.

The siren-song of spring rolls is always hard to resist - for $6.90 we got a serve of six.

These were pretty good - crispy and not too oily, with a dipping sauce that wasn't sweet chilli straight from the bottle. The filling was a bit dull - basically noodles and a little bit of carrot - but we're really ordering these for the pastry and sauce anyway.

The menu has a substantial vegetarian section (16 mains!), covering a good range of standard Thai dishes. For once I avoided the curry section and Cindy resisted the lure of Pad Thai. Instead, I opted for pad tofu nakuer (stir-fried vegetables, bean curd, eggplant, chilli, garlic and sweet basil, $12.90).

I was very impressed by this - the sauce had a great chilli kick, the eggplant was a tender sponge for it and the rest of the vegies were good. A bit heavy on the onion probably, but otherwise great.

Cindy got stuck on the phrase 'deep-fried tofu' and ordered the pad rich tofu (deep fried tofu, mixed vegetables and onion topped with sticky ginger sauce, $12.90).

The massive pile of crispy vegetables on top of this meal wowed us both, providing healthy cover for the crispy cubes of deep-fried tofu. The sauce wasn't as sticky or gingery as we were hoping, but otherwise we had no complaints.

Service was friendly but scheduling was flaky - I'd almost finished my main by the time Cindy's arrived. My coconut juice was delicious but overly sweet and the coconut rice was excellent. All in all, Thai on Street turned out pretty well for us - maybe not quite up to Bangkok Rain's high standards - but still a good local option.

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There are only a couple of blog reviews out there about Thai on Street, both pretty positive, from Miss Adriennely and EatDrinkPlayShopMelbourne.

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Thai on Street
56 Lygon Street, Brunswick East
9388 2314
veg entrees $6.90, mains $12.90

Accessibility: Thai on Street has a step-free entry way but is pretty jam-packed inside. There's not much room to move at all. Ordering and payment happens at the table.