The Best Thai Restaurants in Sydney
From cheap local neighbourhood favourites to more experimental fine diners.
The Best Thai Restaurants in Sydney
From cheap local neighbourhood favourites to more experimental fine diners.
Creating a list of the very best Thai restaurants in Sydney is no easy feat. We're spoilt for choice when it comes to places that serve up the perfect green curry, pad thai and tom yum soup. But while us Aussies love these classic dishes, each of Sydney's best Thai restaurants serves up stacks of other regional delicacies that must be ordered — either keeping traditional dishes as authentic as possible or totally reinventing them for a new audience.
These are the Thai diners in Sydney where you can safely go off-piste. Ask the server for recommendations or simply close your eyes and pick something totally random. Let fate decide. Whatever option you choose, you won't be disappointed by the food, drinks and service at the best Thai restaurants in Sydney.
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Every Sydneysider thinks their local Thai restaurant is the best, but Glebe residents may just have the edge thanks to Tom-Yum Tum-Gang. Well, depending on what you’re looking for. If it’s an excellent atmosphere or boundary-pushing dishes you’re craving, we suggest going elsewhere. But for familiar Thai-style dishes, huge portions and wallet-friendly prices, Tom-Yum Tum-Gang is your spot.
And when we say wallet-friendly, we really mean it. We’re talking lunch specials and cheap mains at dinner. Crowds flock here for all the classics — think massaman beef curry (the restaurant’s signature dish), pad thai and prawn laksa. The chicken wings are a must-order dish, too. It’s obviously one of the best Thai restaurants in Sydney.
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Every neighbourhood needs a reliable Thai restaurant. For Potts Point, it’s Llankelly Thai. The laneway restaurant is perfect for when you and your mates desperately need a catch-up but you’re all on a budget. The food is really affordable, and the food is simple but packed with flavour. The team isn’t looking to reinvent the cuisine here. They’re just doing the classics really well.
Come for lunch to grab and quick, cheap laksa or wonton soup (ideal to beat the cold in winter) or go THE full hog by feasting on curries, noodles and stir fries. But our fave dish has to be the Holy Duck — a roasted and stir-fried duck with chilli, mixed vegetables, pumpkin and basil.
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Newtown is home to plenty of institutions and up there with the best is Thai Pothong — a destination restaurant that’s been drawing in couples on dates, groups of mates sharing a banquet and boisterous twenty-firsts and fortieths for over two decades.
Heaps of Thai eateries line Newtown’s streets, but Thai Pothong rises above them all to be one of the best Thai restaurants in Sydney. The service is top-notch and the expansive dining room offers authentic Thai food in an ever-bustling atmosphere — plus, its fleet of iconic life-sized Transformers and Alien replicas. In the end, the scrap metal art in the shape of Bumblebee or a Xenomorph adds a level of fun to the Sydney establishment, but its tasty Thai dishes are what keeps people coming back.
Image: Cassandra Hannagan.
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Dodee Paidang has managed to grow to over six different locations across Sydney and Melbourne without losing a speck of quality. The menu is vast — made up of classics and more niche regional dishes — and the chefs don’t hold back on the heat. When it says spicy, it really means it. You have been warned.
But if there is one thing you must order here, one of the very best Thai restaurants in Sydney, it’s got to be the tom yum noodles. The recipe comes from the hugely popular Dodee Paidang chain in Thailand, and hasn’t been changed for Western tastes. The sweet and sour broth is flavoured with lemongrass, galangal, lime and Thai herbs before being jazzed up with seafood and meat. It will be one of the best tom yums you ever try.
Image: Cassandra Hannagan.
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This beloved Sydney Thai restaurant prides itself on serving authentic Thai street food that hasn’t been watered down or sweetened up for the more basic diners out there. And yes, that does mean the spice factor is no joke. You will want an ice cold beer on hand throughout this meal.
Seafood is also celebrated throughout. Opt for the red snapper fish cakes in betel leaves, the barramundi and lemongrass salad and the sour orange curry that’s packed with juicy prawns. End it all with a crispy banana roti and Thai-inspired cocktail, and call it a hell of a day. No part of the dining experience is overlooked here, easily making it one of the best That restaurants in Sydney.
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Strap yourself in for a creative feast of fusion flavours at Darlinghurst’s modern Thai eatery. Like its contemporaries, Chin Chin and Long Chim, Restaurant Moon has moved beyond the cheap and cheerful to create a more refined offering. In this case, it’s European meets Thai with a moon dust sprinkling of molecular gastronomy.
We could go on for days about the dishes but our favourite has to be the Surf and Turf. This sirloin steak and baby octopus sir fry looks like a ring around a planet — a soft fried egg is surrounded by a halo of beef strips and tender tentacles, topped with crispy holy basil leaves. It’s all a bit fun, but still entirely delicious and thoughtfully experimental.
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Spice I Am almost sounds like a challenge, or at least a state of mind. But don’t be scared off if you’re not the biggest spicy food lover. Only a few dishes are lethally hot, like the tom klong – roasted fish submerged in a spicy and sour soup. The rest of the menu at Spice I am, one of the very best Thai restaurants in Sydney, focuses on north-eastern Thai cuisine that hasn’t been modified for Western tastes.
Head chef Sujet Saenkham also makes a point to not serve up all the usual stir fry dishes and curries you find at just about every other Thai restaurant in Australia. Instead, come here with the aim to be a bit adventurous. Try something you haven’t before, letting the staff help you explore the offerings.
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Viand’s head chef Annita Potter is driven by the sensory pleasure of eating — something that’s clearly evident throughout the entire dining experience. Dishes are served up like miniature works of art, the open-kitchen makes a spectacle out of the cooking process and the dining room’s ambiance is designed to both relax and enthral. Even the handmade ceramics make you feel that extra bit special.
Food-wise, Potter and her team makes most of the decisions for you.Tasting menus are the name of the game at this Sydney Thai restaurant, with the options ranging from five courses to eight courses, including vegan and pescatarian options. Pair the whole affair with some top notch wines and there you have it — one of the best Thai restaurants in Sydney.
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Alphabet Street is where to go for an upmarket Thai meal in the Shire. Its bubblegum-pink walls also make it a bit of an Instagram fixture. Leaning more towards the upper end of the spectrum than your standard Thai establishment, this venue specialises in flavoursome small bites designed to share.
The contemporary and the traditional collide in dishes like the five-spice squid with lemon dipping sauce, tapioca dumplings with sweet pork and peanut, and enticingly soft and crispy bao with fried chicken and chilli mayo. It’s the kind of Sydney Thai restaurant where you can simply order a heap of small dishes and leave very, very happy.
Image: Mel Koutchavlis.
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There are heaps of Thai restaurants in Sydney, but Macquarie Park’s Khao Pla is in a league of its own. It serves up modern dishes that span culinary regions from all over Thailand, made with local and seasonal Aussie produce. You can get all the classics done to perfection, but the regular changing specials are what makes Khao Pla one of the best Thai restaurants in Sydney.
The kitchen here, one of the best Thai restaurants in Sydney, regularly turns out a menu of inventive specials that. Highlights include larb tartare with coriander and grounded roasted rice, twice-cooked pork ribs tossed in tamarind sauce and deep fried whole fish (whatever is good at the local market) with a fresh green mango salad. We’re also obsessed with the banana and Nutella roti served with a big scoop of smoked coconut sorbet.
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Located in Sydney’s food capital of Haymarket, Porkfat stands out as an elegant alternative to Sydney’s often hectic and dressed-down Thai dining scene. The flavours come from the owner’s hometown of Saraburi in central Thailand, and the dishes are traditional but at the same time unique, with some surprising offerings hidden amongst the classics.
The papaya salad with salted duck egg, dried prawn, fish sauce and lime is the perfect light dish to kick off your dining experience. Meanwhile the baked Queensland tiger prawn with vermicelli, pork fat, oyster sauce, Chinese wine, ginger and celery is a unique mix of flavours you won’t find elsewhere. There’s even a banquet menu for groups of six or more, meaning you can try some of the best Thai food in Sydney without having to make any choices.
Image: Leigh Griffiths.
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Chat Thai is the worst kept secret amongst Sydney’s Thai community. With a focus on Thai street food and dishes that are meant to be for Thai palates only, Chat Thai was meant to be a Thai person’s Thai restaurant. But when you do the mainstay favourites this well, and at very, very reasonable prices, it’s inevitable that the cat will get out of the bag.
If you want to try something new, we recommend you sample the tom saap — a hot and sour soup with braised pork ribs. But for those who are less adventurous, the chilli fried rice, padt si-ew or ki mao are excellent. We recommend you arrive early for dinner — ensuring you miss the line and potentially secure some of the last lunch specials still being served.
Top images: Long Chim.
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