tapioca

Restaurant Review by Franz Scheurer

Right on Military Road in Cremorne, tapioca is a long and narrow 85 seater restaurant with clean, modern lines, all hard surfaces, a polished floor and a noise level to match. This is not a ‘first date’ restaurant but it does make up for it with some of the food it serves.

We started dinner with ‘Deep-fried quail egg and minced prawns wrapped in egg noodle, served with tamarind sauce’ ($14) and ‘Smoked trout, roasted coconut, peanuts, chilli, lime, ginger and caramel sauce served on betel leaves’ ($18). The quail eggs were a texturally amazing ‘ball’ of goodness, with a crunchy outside and a gooey inside and the tamarind sauce’s sour component worked very well. The betel leaves were huge! You get four pieces, sweet, hot and salty, served on a betel leaf the size the average Adam would be very happy to wear. For mains we started with the ‘Crispy rice balls salad with fried cured pork, fresh ginger, peanuts, fried chilli and lime dressing’ ($20) followed by ‘Green curry of wagyu beef with roti’ ($22), followed by ‘Stir-fried long eggplant with silken tofu, chilli and Thai basil’ ($18) and finally ‘Pad thai with king prawns, bean sprout, egg and peanut’ ($19.50). The rice balls delivered the sour and sweet components, the green curry was nice and hot and the eggplant salty, the combined flavours a perfect balance of hot, sweet, sour and salty. Don’t expect roti Channai; it’s Thai roti; smaller, denser and much oilier but still perfect to dunk in the sauce or use as a wrapper to pick up morsels of food. The Pad thai unfortunately was the weak link as it tried to deliver value with a number of huge prawns that did not work; this is not a prawn dish and they should not be the hero. The green curry however was the dish of the night; gorgeous aromas, confirmed with exploding flavours of small, round Thai eggplant, lots of scuds and soft beef. If you like pork you will love the rice balls salad and the eggplant reminded me more of an Indian or Mamak dish with its liberal use of dried spices.

For dessert we had the one dish we could not leave without ‘Tapioca pudding with young coconut and coconut cream’ ($9) one of the best Thai desserts I have eaten. Although it is rather sweet, the sweetness is tempered by a lovely saltiness. It’s almost as good as the ‘Coconut Ash Pudding’ that David Thompson used to serve. That pudding alone would make me want to come back.

I really liked the wine list, although small and concise, it has a lot of different wines I like to drink. The Crawford River Rosé worked really well with the Thai flavours and I noticed a couple of good Pinot Noirs and a terrific Chenin Blanc. Choice by the glass is good and the wines offered do go with the flavours of the food; someone put a lot of thought into preparing this list.

Service is attentive and nothing seems too much trouble. This is a lovely suburban Thai restaurant that is a ‘cut above’ most.

Value for money: Good; portions are rather big, too

Noise: 85 db when half full…

Would I go back: I want more tapioca pudding!

Score: 7/10

tapioca

318a Military Road

Cremorne NSW 2090

Tel.: 02 9908 1588