Nahm Thai

I have always love Thai food, especially after travel to Thailand myself. Thai food are best known to be extremely spicy, aromatic, fragrant, rich, sweet and sour, all of these exciting flavours.

Have heard alot of great review about Nahm Thai, they were even being mentioned in the little booklet of Australia Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Guide both 2009 & 2010. Especially after reading the write up about them on Gourmet Traveller, I told myself I've had to try them one day.

Went there one day spontaneously after shopping with my girly friend, we were lucky enough to secure a last minute reservation but had to be in before 6:30pm. We were driving along the quiet end of Bulwer St and try looking for the restaurant, instead we spotted Nine Fine Food but later discovered Nahm Thai is actually just next to them.

Nahm Thai is definitely not your neighbourhood traditional Thai take-away shop that sells spring rolls or your classic Thai Green curry. Think fine dining mix with Thai flavour; the decor is modern, classy with a mix of oriental using some bamboo/wooden partition and semi-see through curtain. The tiny room was dimly-lit, with candle on the table, dark painted wall and white table linen, very intimate, and modern. You wouldn't feel like you're in a Thai restaurant, but a contemporary fusion restaurant, with that putting aside, this 45 seater home to classy and contemporary Thai cuisine. 

Every thing on the menu and the special board sounds interesting and new, but there are only 2 of us, we don't have such a big apetite to try everything. Instead, we head for the recommendation from other bloggers or reviewers, just so we could try their best. As the dinner come unprepared, so I didn't take my camera along with me (slap myself in forehead), we'll have to use my mate's lousy Nokia phone camera, simply due to the brightnest in the room her phone with flash finally become handy.

For Entree I had their Homemade Thai sausage serve with cucumber salad, the traditional spicy sausage was sliced up nicely on an angle, served with some fresh cucumber salad and some sweet and sour syrup. The complex flavour of the sausage was well accompanied with the cucumber and the refreshing sauce. They were so good that i don't mind eating these on a daily basis. Definately unlike your normal western beef or pork sausage, this isn't greasy at all and was packed full of aromatic flavours from Thai herbs and lemongrass, it was such a great way to start the dinner.

I thought my sausage was on the high, not until i try my friend D's Galloping horses, these little morsels was served like canapes. There were 6 of them on the plate, 3 of each was with pineapple slice and another 3 was with mandarin slices. Although, we were not quite sure what's the mash-up mix were, but they tasted divine. Imagine Thai flavour like driep shrimp, lemongrass, chilli, lime, coriander and fish sauce all sauteed to pastey like consistency and then to go with either pineapple or mandarin slices, gosh that was better than having an orgy. As I'm writing this, I feel like eating them already! I envied D's entree same as how she envied my entree, both were indeed fantastic entree.

While entree was that great, our anticipation for our mains were even higher, I had their signature dish - Roast duck in red curry, fresh lychee and quail egg. It was well presented, with lots of Thai herbs on top of the dish, the curry looks fresh and thick. The first thing i did was to take a sip of the curry (of course, we took a picture of it first), and boy oh boy it was like home run, since the first sip, I'm hooked on! The curry unlike the one you'll get from your neighbourhood take-away shop, because those are probably coming out from Mae-Ploy jar. Whilst the one in Nahm Thai, you can taste that it's homemade curry. It was very rich in flavour, awesomely thick and creamy. The richness from the curry was well cut through eating with the nicely roast duck breast slices and fresh lychee. Talking about balance in flavour, i think chef Kevin Pham knows it all. You are recommended to eat this dish with steamed rice to take this dish to the next level. I wanted to order coconut steamed rice instead of just jasmine steamed rice at first, but the waiter who took our order suggested that i should go with jasmine steamed rice because the curry was very rich, how kind was he and thanks to his advise, if not i wouldn't be able to enjoy this dish this much.

D ordered their other signature main course - the Crispy skin pork hock, according to her this is the highlight of her roller coaster ride. She did described this meal as "riding a rollercoaster", It's like surfing through waves of flavours! No doubt, the crispy skin pork hock does have fabulous crispy skin and the meat underneath the crispy skin was oh so tender, they were practically melt in your mouth. Due to the fats and meat porportion of a pork hock, the chef was very smart to pair this up with sweet and tangy light sauce. Imagine the sensation that your palate is getting, crispy pork crackling with tender and juicy pork meat that is full of porky flavour linger on your tongue and then the flavour of sweet and tangy sensation starts to kick in to cut down the fattiness, last but not least the flavour from the herbs explode in your mouth, giving you an incredible end to it. Sublime!

I couldn't agree more that the meal we had in Nahm Thai was like riding on a rollercoaster or perhaps some may say - great sex! Kudos to Chef Kevin Pham and his crew, giving us an ultra tantalizing meal, he did indeed takes Perth's Thai food or Asian food to the next level.

Food Quality: 4.5 Galloping horses (there are always room for improvement isn't it!)
Service: 4 Galloping horses
Ambience: 4 Galloping horses (1 point taken out due to the size of the restaurant, it tends to be noisy when it's full house)
Will I be back: Can't wait for my next rollercoaster ride!

p/s: Do make reservations ahead of time and if you don't like waiting for food for too long, do get in early as after 7:30pm people starts to fill up the room. And it will be difficult especially for holding an intimate conversation.

Nahm Thai
223 Bulwer St
Perth 6000 WA 
Phone: (08) 9328 7500
Opening Hours: Mon - Sat 6pm - 10pm