Roll in to this Thai spot, order this comforting noodle dish, and you’re in for a happy time

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The story of this charming, new restaurant starts in other Thai restaurants, places where Ari.BKK’s owner and chef Artitaya “View” Chimrit was taken by her partner, Oliver Ku, an IT adviser. “Please don’t bring me here again,” View said every time, unenamoured of yet another spin on Melbourne suburban Thai. She wanted meals like those she grew up eating in Wang Nam Khiao, three hours north-east of Bangkok, where her mum runs a 200-seat restaurant, Fresh. Responsive to the seasons. No pre-made curry pastes to be seen.

View cooked at home instead of enduring unsatisfying meals out, calling her mum for recipes, wowing her friends and, eventually, taking their advice and expanding her dinner parties into 40-seat Ari.BKK, named after a hip Bangkok suburb, which opened in March.

It’s in the shop that housed Lebanese restaurant Mankoushe for 15 years and there’s a sense of passing the baton, not in cuisine but in terms of Ari.BKK being another example of a proprietor putting their soul on the plate and trusting that the community will support them. I’d be surprised if Brunswick East doesn’t repay that honest outreach with avid custom.

The room feels cosy and domestic (albeit with bistro tables), service is keen and the food is boisterous but impeccably balanced.

Start with a cocktail, probably the makham-ikaze, a shaken coupe of dark rum and tamarind that leaps into a sweet-sour dance.

Goong chae nam pla is a salad of raw prawns marinated in fish sauce, lime and sugar, then dressed with coriander root, chilli, garlic and lime. Fried shallots add crunch to pert, prawny snap.

Things get interesting with the som tum kao poht, a corn version of som tum, a lively, lime-tart salad generally made with green papaya. Ari.BKK’s version adds avocado, strawberry and macadamia in an imaginative spin, as though a Thai salad crashed an Aussie brunch and came out with prizes.

There’s comfort food, too: pad kee mao is a stir-fry normally made with flat noodles, but View’s version uses rolled rice noodles chopped into gnocchi-size dumplings. With fragrant Thai basil pulling against the stickiness of sweet soy, the char and chew, you could come in for this one dish and craft yourself a very happy evening.

Don’t overlook the cabbage, floppy but retaining bite, given extra dimension with fish sauce that turns to caramel as it hits the wok.

The dessert list is short but brilliant: khao neow brulee takes sticky, coconutty rice, scatters it with coconut flakes, then sugar which is torched to create a hard caramel shell, sweet and bitter colliding like a starburst.

Ari.BKK is a sign of Melbourne’s maturing Thai food scene. In the city, around Bourke Street’s Thai Town, there are unapologetic eateries, such as Pick Prik and Boon Choou, serving international students and a broader, spice-positive community. Beyond the CBD, more places are busting green-curry cliches: Charlong in St Kilda, Geelong supper club Laam Thai, Ranong Town in Ferntree Gully and Bar Spontana in Brunswick among them.

Ari.BKK isn’t trying to slot in neatly because why should it? It’s personal – View’s view if you will – offered with optimism to an open-minded public.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.