Thai Wi-Rat

What a find! Was looking for a little restaurant in Chinatown Mall to have dinner before a show at the Judith Wright Centre and made a sensational choice! Was definitely swayed by the great newspaper reviews in the window and was not disappointed! The three of us shared 2 entrees (chicken satay skewers and crumbed calamari) and 3 mains (beef choo chee curry, pork larb and combination seafood stirfry with basil and chilli). We took a bottle of wine and corkage was $ 1.90 pp. It is a casual place; however despite being told we needed to order at the counter, the lovely waiters came to our table to take our orders after all! The total bill came to just $ 22 per head. Can’t wait for my next visit :)

Best Thai food ever!
First vegetarian Tom yum soup I’ve ever seen — and it was just amazing.
The staff are so cool and know their stuff about food.
It was really busy when we got there with a long line, so I was excepting a wait time but service was so fast.
I had vege spring rolls — I love the vermicelli I think it was inside them.
Then Tom yum (vegetarian) best ever.
Then a vege pad Thai.
My dad ordered a catfish, slightly disappointed there was no head. He was very happy with it — «well worth trying» he said.
There was a great selection of beers Thai and Aussie.
Wish there was more indoor seating.
We will be coming back without a doubt!

This is the very best Thai restaurant in Queensland hands down bar none, no further correspondence will be entered into on the matter.
Nowhere else ever quite gets there for me.
I love Thai food. It’s incredibly special to me. When I was 24 a very treasured birthday present was a cooking class at Black Pearl Epicure with David Thompson and a copy of his bible Thai Food (which he autographed). It was a genuinely life changing experience.
This is the absolute best restaurant. Everything is incredible. It’s unbelievable.
If you’re familiar with Thai foodpaths this place is very much street food. The palace food offerings are limited to a couple of curries and just not that great. But if you want the musty, fiery tang of street food this place is for you.
There’s a couple of dishes that really stand out for me but as a word of warning, these are dishes very much to my taste so generally protein or salad driven and hotter than hades in summer. You can ask then to tone the heat down but that makes you a weak person.
The grilled chicken is just wowza. Charred, sticky, smoky sweet and with a sauce you should order double of. The bamboo salad tastes like rattan furniture smells in the best possible way. The pork larb is meaty and herbal and pungent as it gets and the whole fried catfish is just an absolute delight.
Run don’t walk.

Although I love cheap thai food, unfortunately this establishment is a bit too hit-​or-​miss to take that chance. The wide noodle dishes are what I would recommend you stick to when you eat here, and with chicken at that. The beef dishes, in my opinion, were all too gamey and chewy. The outdoor dining is nice, especially if you like drunk people watching in the valley.

Don’t ask for the tofu massaman and actually Expect any tofu in it. When you question where all the missing tofu is, you will be charged an extra $ 3 on top. Um … What?

The food was very good. We had a choo chee curry and a pad see ew, and they were both great, although moderate-​sized portions. The total came to $ 24, which is not bad for two really good Thai dishes and a side of rice (sold separately).
The service is lacking, though. Although it’s a small place and there are several servers, you have to seat yourself and then get up and order (and pay in advance) at the counter. They didn’t seem to have much patience for our questions, either.

My friends suggested that we have dinner here before going out on the town in the Valley. We wanted to sit outside and though they were pretty packed, they accommodated us! They brought out a table from inside the restaurant which was above and beyond what they needed to do.
If you are one ticket, they will bring your bill but if you are paying separately, it is counter service. They are also BYO and charge a $ 1.90 corkage fee. Prices are reasonably priced as well.
Everyone’s food looked very tasty and by the time we had our plates taken away, they were completely empty. I ordered the Pad Ce-​eW with chicken extra spicy and they did just that. It was delicious! Will definitely come back.

We come here for the Green Paw Paw Salad. Nuf said.

I’ve dined here a couple of times: once for a pre-​night out dinner with friends and most recently for a Sunday lunch. I remember enjoying the former occasion, with my friends and I ordering a large range of dishes which we shared around, and the BYO wine and in-​house beer flowing. The Tom Sum was good from memory.
My most recent lunch was perhaps a little less enjoyable. I ordered from the daily specials, selecting the ‘Thai Northern Style Noodle Soup’ on recommendation from my girlfriend, who had enjoyed the noodle soups she’d had in Chang Mai. She, a vegetarian, had to settle for the Panang veggie curry, as the thre was pork in the noodle soup.
The food was pretty quick to come out, and it was accompanied by a smaller side plate containing chillies, a lime wedge and bean sprouts (similar to the Phở accoutrements). The first thing that struck me about the dish was its pungent aroma. It was hard to place what the smell was: perhaps a combination of fish sauce, pork bone stock and curry paste. The meat itself was pork ribs, and because of that there were quite a few pieces of bone and gristle to contend with. That said there were also some pieces of succulent meat tainted by neither of these.
The broth was very oily and had an almost unpleasant fermented taste to it. It was something that I kind of got used to as I got into the rhythm of eating it, and in the end I was happy enough with the meal, but if I had the time again would have probably chosen something else.
My girlfriend’s curry was by all reports pretty good, but perhaps could have benefited from a few more varieties of vegetable.

One of my favourite Thai restaurants in Brisbane because of their Isaan and Laos influences and menu items.
Sticky rice and Som Tum (spicy papaya salad) is a must try dish, and is a hugely popular dish in Thailand, especially in the Isaan (Northeastern region). Yet hardly any Thai restaurants here in Brisbane serve it.
Larb Gai (spicy ground chicken) is another of my favourite dishes and Gai Yang (Grilled chicken). It’s simple, yet such an iconic Isaan dish.
Thai Wi-​rat also does a fantastic Pad C-​ew and Massaman curry (with beef, always with beef!). The beef in the Massaman just falls apart, it’s so tender.
Order a Beer Chaang (the Elephant beer) to have with your meal and you’re as close to the Isaan experience as you’re going to get in Brisbane!

Sometimes a small thing can bring down the whole experience of a restaurant, and this is the problem with Thai Wi Rat. The food, while not spectacular, is quite good, and the restaurant itself is a nice place to sit down, but it’s the ordering system that is the issue for me.
The first time I visited, table service was in use, but more recently customers have been required to order from the front counter. This is a problem for a popular restaurant in a busy area in that there ends up being a long line made up of people already seated but waiting to order as well as people trying to get a table. My companion and I found this annoying and timewasting, and the food just isn’t good enough to make up for it.
It is a fun place to go and eat with a group, but there are certainly other places with better food and service I would rather visit.

Thai Wi-​Rat — the name’s a little off-​putting, but the food is actually pretty good.
With indoor and outdoor dining available, I think outdoor is nice as the Chinatown Mall is newly refurbished and kept clean, perhaps a lot cleaner than it’s neighbour, Brunswick Street Mall.
With BYO, this is a great place for a group wishing to dine casually, but well. Highly recommend.

I’ve got to say Thai Wi Rat is a mixed bag. I know some people (mostly vegetarians) who don’t like it and I have to admit the yellow curry somebody ordered was pretty bland and uninspiring.
On the other hand, they have this red curry with pork neck and green peppercorns that is like culinary crack. It’s piquant and the pork is tender and the peppercorns pop and it’s just all round bullshit good.
The pad thai is also pretty good from memory but really, I’m just in it for the green peppercorns.