Pomegranate is my favourite Thai restaurant. It’s more expensive than your standard Thai restaurant but the thing about it is that it doesn’t serve your bog standard Aussie Thai fare. Pomegranate has amazing blackboard specials you can’t find anywhere else. My friends and I had these for dinner:
Deep fried spicy whitebait in betel leaves. Ohhhh crunchy crispy salty goodness and the slight bitterness of the betel leaves om nom nom nom. I’ve always associated betel leaves with the chewing practice because my late grandmother did it and I was absolutely fascinated with the process. Actually eating it was a new experience, but I welcome it with open arms (as long as it’s accompanied with deep fried whitebait).
Taro dumplings filled with pork mince and peanuts – a blackboard special. This and a few other dishes have Thai names that I can’t remember. It’s served on a witlof leaf. I found out tonight that I’m not a huge fan of witlof but it was still good. Love the contrast of the pillowy taro dumpling and crispy insides. The shape of the actual dumpling creates a civilised party in your mouth, complete with its best silver tea service.
Pork spare ribs served with two sauces (not pictured) – tamarind and sweet chilli. The meat was falling off the bones and melt-in-your-mouth tender.
Spicy deep fried crispy barramundi with salted duck eggs (blackboard special). This is the best I can do with the picture, sorry. The sauce tastes like pad prik king, but I’ve only ever had that dish once so I’m probably not the best person to ask about that sort of thing. Alls I know is, it’s bloody addictive and my friend scraped every last bit off the plate. He does that all the time anyway but the scraping was accompanied with heaps of praise and not just desperation.
Banana flower salad with creamy tamarind dressing and poached chicken (the white bits). I think the chicken was unnecessary – the salad was delicious on its own.
DESSERT TIME! The desserts are always blackboard specials.
Passionfruit and chilli sorbet. The chilli gets a little bit overwhelming and I don’t like passionfruit, but the two people who had this gave two thumbs up.
My friend and I shared this one – it’s black sticky rice, mango and coconut cream ice cream. My friend was greedy and wanted one dish for himself but we’re glad he didn’t – this was bloody huge and probably had the meat off one whole mango. This was v. good but the black sticky rice was crusty in some places.
Servings are crazy big. The above cost us $40 per person and we were dying from the amount of food we got. Service tends to be a little bit slow but very friendly. Book in advance on Friday and Saturday nights and prepare for a bit of a squeeze – it’s not a big restaurant and the tables are small.
Pomegranate Thai
191 Darling St. Balmain
(02) 9555 5693
The dumplings are Chor Muang, and the whitebait is Pla.. something.
Man that barramundi looks like a watery turd. But the turd-esque ones are usually the best as any good food blogger knows. I like the icecream it looks nice and makes me want to eat some icecream now.
hehe the taro dumplings look so pretty and damn i love black sticky rice!