Dara Food Express Restaurant, Thai & Laos, Fairfield

Have you been to a restaurant where the ingredients are fresh, the food relatively authentic, but somehow you feel something is missing?

Dara Food Express is one of many Thai and Laos restaurants in the Fairfield area.  It's a small, humble place that is often not top of mind, especially at night when there is minimal foot traffic in Fairfield CBD.

It does most dishes adequately, but nothing really soars.  The pad thai above contains everything it should and the ingredients are fresh, but lacks that extra oomph.

The massaman curry above is my favourite and actually is really very good.  Beef cooked melt-in-your-mouth tender absorbing the curry flavours, the potato cooked perfectly - sounds simple enough but often you'll find them under-cooked.

The green mango in the thai som tum is fresh, actually very fresh but unevenly sliced and tonight was a bit too green and hard.  It had good fish sauce flavour but, for me, lacked sweetness and sourness.

The relatively plain sauce is the undoing of the lao sausage, which is otherwise fine.

Dara Food Express cooks up authentic Thai and Laos food, the dishes are very competent, but overall struggle compared to quality of other restaurants in the area.

Have you experienced that 'everything looks right' but somehow doesn't all come together?  Have you been to Dara recently and have a different experience?  Would be interested in your feedback.

Dara Food Express
6/20 Spencer Street, Fairfield
02 9755 0449

Roti main street Luang Prabang

Nothing better than fresh, piping hot, buttery banana roti

Creme Caramel, L'Elephant, Luang Prabang, Laos

Melt in the mouth deliciousness

Lao Soup

On the way back from a local temple in town we came across a small street stall (actually it was relatively big by local standards).  In Vietnamese, there's a rice noodle dish that is particularly flavoured with prawn paste that we call soup lao.

I wanted to see if this was it.  There were two types the lady was selling and I picked the one that looked the most spicy.  It wasn't soup lao, it was more like Vietnamese bun bo hue.  It seemed to be pork mince in a relatively mild soup.  You could add your own fresh chili or chili paste or prawn paste for that matter to your own taste.

What did come with it was a wonderful array of greens which you put into the soup, basil, green beans, lime, watercress, ngo gay (barbed coriander), lettuce.  It was truly magnificent!

The whole meal came to less than $A2 per person.