Sydney is full of Thai restaurants but Krung is a decidedly different proposition hidden away behind a velvet curtain of Pitt Street in the city. It has a dark seductive club bar vibe and a chef formerly of Chat Thai. And if you're a Pad Thai lover, you're in luck!
I'm standing in a little space surrounded by green velvet curtains. "What do I do?" I ask Mr NQN looking around. "I don't know... pull it back here?" he says gesturing towards the curtain. I can hear the music so I do so and we enter a darkly lit room full of people.
Krung is the tenth restaurant from owner Paul Chayakorn Kulthanachaidech of Abb Air Thai Cuisine 1982 who originally hails from Pattaya in Thailand but has been in Australia for 25 years. This is also his 10th restaurant with business partner Chef Naruedom Nukraihong, formerly of Chat Thai. Krung is designed as a fun playground of Thai cocktails, food and music.
While Krung means capital city in Thai, Paul explains the name further, "The name also carries a layered meaning for me: K – Kulture, R – Recipes, U – Unique Identity, N – Notes (music & rhythm), G – Gathering."
At Krung, you can get all the classic favourites like green curry chicken, cashew chicken and papaya salad but they've also got dishes from the Issan region of Thailand and a whole series of Pad Thais. The restaurant seats 85 people and they have live music every night. Ordering is done through a QR code and all of the items have a picture but they're actually gorgeously detailed drawings rather than a photo.
We start with a couple of cocktails. The 'Sa Thu' Daisy is made with Khao Hom rice spirit, lychee liqueur, lychee juice, lotus syrup and lime juice. The two part cocktail comes in a hand-painted Benjarong porcelain bowl with a little jasmine scented cookie.
We also order the "Chor Muang" Lady made with Gordon's pink gin, fermented rice, butterfly pea syrup, lime juice and egg white and served in a champagne coupe. They spray a perfume of Thai Malai edible perfume that is said to recreate the sense of when you enter a royal reception room.
This is as much a bar as it is a restaurant although everybody seems to be eating. One of the bar snacks that looks to be very popular are skewers of marinated pork intestines wrapped around a lemongrass stick and grilled over charcoal. There's a slight funk from the intestines but this is tempered with the dipping sauce and the lemon grass gives it a light aroma too.
The signature dish is the Larb Ped Benja crisp which is an Issan style duck larb with spicy aromatic flavour that is layered with five crispy elements including duck skin. It has that magical combination of garlic, chilli, makrut lime leaf and shallots. A little warning: this is quite hot and was a bit too hot for Mr NQN so you may need to make a note for medium spice. I found the rest of the dishes weren't quite as spicy as this one.
There's a few different types of rice but they recommend the crab fried rice and this ends up being one of my favourite dishes. It's wok fried jasmine rice with crab meat and egg cooked through it. It's also handy to have if any of the dishes are a little too spicy and also goes with everything that we ordered.
I love grilled pork jowl and this is a charcoal grilled lightly smoky pork neck with a spicy dipping sauce. There's also cucumber and cabbage on the side. This is particularly good with the fried rice.
One of the best value dishes is the Ocean Riot Yum which is a medley of seafood with a spicy lime Thai dressing, fresh herbs and corn cut from the cob. There's mussels, baby octopus, calamari and prawns as well as raw blue swimmer crab legs (the rest of the seafood is cooked). For a platter this size with so much seafood you would expect to pay much more.
One of the specialties here is the Pad Thai series. Paul tells us there are actually 10 different types of Pad Thai found throughout Thailand and here they've got 4 on the menu. They recommend the Chaiya Southern Pad Thai with dried shrimp and coconut that gives it a real coastal seafood flavour. This is a fantastic Pad Thai and while it is on the sweeter side, the noodles are slippery and perfectly saucy while the two gigantic prawns on top are tender and succulent.
The Moo Hong is a large piece of slow braised pork belly in a Hokkien soy sauce with crispy tofu and a whole boiled egg. It comes with a serrated knife and a spoon and is so gloriously soft and melting. The only note I'd make is that it can be hard to cut yourself although it does look impressive when brought to the table as one large slab.
It's early days so the dessert experience which is mango with sticky rice isn't available but that only gives us an excuse to come back.
NQN and Mr NQN were guests of Krung but all opinions remain her own.
Shop 137/414 Pitt St, Haymarket NSW 2000
Phone: (02) 8542 0550
Open: 11:30am-1am 7 days a week
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