Thai Lemongrass, Darlinghurst

Fish Cakes

Our latest group buy voucher lands us at Thai Lemongrass, a cozy little Thai restaurant on a quiet street in Darlinghurst. The restaurant is anything but quiet on a normal weekday night, though we notice most customers are coming with vouchers too, which makes us wonder (as we often do with these deals) how on earth they make a profit by selling so many vouchers.

We've got a bigger problem ourselves, that is of choosing one entree and main each from the menu- there's just too many things we'd love to try! We start with a serving of fish cakes which are rather spicy for me, though i don't really take spice too well! I must say, they are rather tasty though.

Duck larb

The Duck larb sounds interesting and different so we order that also and find out that it's rather much like sang choi bow, only with a much tinnier lettuce leaf and (arguably) tastier meat filling flavoured with plenty of aromatic herbs. We love its presentation, though the size of the lettuce leaf means that it is quite difficult to eat.

Mixed Entree

We'd originally ordered their prawn cakes, but as they'd run out, we ordered a mixed entree instead which although not as interesting as our original choice, turned out pretty good. The satay chicken skewer was quite tasty and though we couldn't quite figure what sauce the chicken wing was cooked in (the menu says it's thai herbs and sweet chilli sauce- though it didn't taste anything like sweet chilli to us), we quite enjoyed that one too.  You can't really go wrong with fried entrees, and the spring roll and curry puff were both crispy and delicious.

Tom Yum Soup

The flavours in the Tom Yum Soup probably defines what we would describe 'Westernised' Thai food- overly sweetened and all the wrong flavours. It tastes rather much like a sweet Thai curry sauce than the usual spicy and sour soup we're used to.

Deep Fried Fish with Papaya Salad

Unlike a lot of other vouchers, this one entitles us to anything on the menu, so we're excited that we can order the whole fish dishes. We go for the fish with papaya salad, which is beautifully deep fried (though it's not as crispy as it looks) which is covered in a light sweet chilli-like sauce. The fish meat is already cut up into chunks which makes it a lot simpler to eat, though we do enjoy picking at the crispy bones (tails and fins!) and we find quite a lot of meat still attached to the bones.

Pad Thai King Prawns

We ordered the Pad Thai King Prawns, one of the pricier options on the menu, to see why it is so special it made it to the chef's special menu over the other variations of pad thai they had on their menu. The grilled BBQ king prawns come separate to the noodles, and have a nice smokey flavour, although the three prawns weren't too great for sharing between four!

The pad thai noodles aren't too special, and their noodles a tad chewier than I'd like, but they're enjoyable and tasty like any other classic Pad Thai dish.

Ped nam buoy- Roast Duck

On the menu, the roast duck seems a little out of place for a Thai restaurant and even more so when the dish finally arrives as it's really similar to the Chinese roast duck we're used to, especially with the light dressing of plum sauce. That said, it's amazingly delicious, with a great duck flavour, and not at all dry like some roasted ducks we've had in the past. I don't usually eat much of the skin of roast duck, but this one was so incredibly very crispy and tasty I couldn't resist eating it all!

Lime Leaves Peppercorn Seafood

The lime leaves and peppercorn seafood looked like a pretty boring stir fry of seafood and veggies, but we did get a bit of a surprise amongst tasting as it has a great breath of wok and is very tasty.

Khanom Tako

We finish off with the dessert of the day, a light coconut jelly/pudding which we enjoy as we're all coconut lovers. We're surprised, as we dig in, to find that there's a second layer on the bottom, which is less coconutty and more jelly like, with pieces of water chestnut. It's a shame it's such a small serving as we really enjoyed it!