We're on a bit of a Kingston Foreshore jaunt here at Food and Wine. Catriona Jackson took herself down to the Rum Bar last week for cocktails and some interesting shared plates. And this week I'm just two doors down at Chong Co, next to the Max Brenner chocolate shop. It's a fast growing area, with trendy little cafes springing up, new restaurants filled with diners and a bar or two for those important post-work drinks. So no doubt there'll be more reviews to come, particularly when the new Walt and Burley bar throws open its doors.
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Chong Co isn't a newcomer to the Canberra food scene. It used to be in Belconnen, serving up Thai food to the northside. But owner Aoi has been opening up new branches of the restaurant left, right and centre. There is now a Chong Co restaurant in Gungahlin, one in the Southern Cross Club in Woden and this one on the Kingston Foreshore. It seems a little incongruous.
Friday night for a catch-up dinner with a mate seems perfect. Chong Co is busy, busy, busy - the big patio doors are thrown open and the outside area full of tables and chairs protected behind plastic marquee walls. The aesthetic is "bustling". Don't expect hand-crafted tables, hipster crockery assembled piecemeal from vintage stores, deliberately mismatched chairs and bicycles filled with pot plants.
This is a restaurant designed to handle large numbers of diners quickly and efficiently. And there are large numbers, plenty of groups seated at banquettes up the back and round a centrepiece bench at the front of the restaurant.
The menu is huge, the kind with lots of laminated pages, but there's a canny nod to the young professional crowd that fills the Kingston foreshore - the drinks menu. There's half a page of cocktails in addition to the standard wines and beers. What better way to end a long week than a lurid pink-and-cream concoction topped with a slice of apple, and a mai tai, both of which strive to deny winter's onset with tropical colour and alcoholic fervour.
Thai fish cakes ($11.90) don't get the meal off to a great start - they fall very much on the rubbery side of things and are served with the inevitable light, sweet chilli sauce. Deep fried tofu ($8.90) is much more welcome, crisp on the outside and with the necessary delicacy and white softness on the inside.
But the most interesting dishes are yet to come. Here we have a kangaroo stir fry with Thai herbs ($29.90) - wafer-thin slices of dark, lean meat tangled through with green beans, garlic, ginger, and chilli. It's adorned with big clusters of green peppercorns, laid lovingly beside the meat like grapes at a Roman feast. It's surprisingly tender for a kangaroo dish, that lean muscled meat is sliced cleverly thin and cooked beautifully. But where the dish succeeds in texture it doesn't quite succeed in flavour - there's so much heat packed into the vegetables, the onion and the meat that the distinctive, gamey taste of the kangaroo doesn't get the chance to shine through.
A duck salad ($25.90) is also a happy surprise. It's a strangely comforting dish with plenty of tender roasted duck pieces coated in generous helpings of a coconutty, peanutty sauce and a smooth chilli jam. The duck meat and the sauce are both silky and they play well with a simple salad fixing - shreds of red onion, lettuce and pieces of wintry cucumber. These lend crunch and bite and a pleasing contrast.
Our final dish of the night is goong pad gong garee ($29.90) or yellow curry with king prawns and mixed vegetables. This is a mild, creamy blend with a satisfying number of nicely cooked prawns and a scattering of green vegetables. It's perfectly pleasant and probably best eaten on a chilly Friday night when you don't want to think too much about your food. A plate of stir fried vegetables and tofu ($18.90) is colourful and competent and gets us our five a day.
Service, like the decor, is bustling. Everyone is carting dishes, bottles, drinks, and is busy busy but not too busy to offer you a greeting and smile as you pass by. And staff manage to be attentive but efficient at the same time. Want that cocktail slightly modified? Certainly. You're about to run out of water, here's another bottle out of nowhere. Bill? Done.
There's a smattering of Thai dessert dishes but let's be honest, we go next door to spread the retail love and drink some hot chocolate from the Bald Man. Chong Co is a little pricier than your usual suburban Thai restaurant but it does what it says on the tin, and tries to experiment a little more than the usual.
Chong Co
Address: 31 Eastlake Parade, Kingston Foreshore
Phone: 6162 0200
Website: www.chongcothai.com.au
Owners: Aoi Pimdee, Wanlop Techasakul, Nong Amita
Chef: Pob Noppadon
Hours: Seven days, lunch 11am-4pm, dinner 4pm-10pm
Licensed: Yes and BYO $2.70 per person
Vegetarian: Several options
Wheelchair access: Yes
To pay: Cash, Visa, Amex, MasterCard, no eftpos
Seats: 150 inside and 50 outside
Summary: It’s not the fine dining of Morks but a decent suburban Thai.
Food: 2/4
Wine list 2/4
Service: 3/4
Style: 2/4
Value for money: 2/4
Score 12/20
