Food Review: Poppy's Thai Restaurant

After last week's disastorous Thai food experience, I thought I would try it again so organised to go to another Thai restaurant with my friends Patrick, Dennis, Kevin, Candy and Michael, who I hadn't seen in ages. After a bit of browsing around on the internet, settled on Poppy's Thai Restaurant in Burwood. As I've said, restaurants that have a website with the menu tend to entice me to go as I can see what is available.

Poppy's is located quitely along a strip of shops on Burwood Highway next to Subway and some grocery stories. It's not much to look at outside but once inside, the surroundings are very warm and inviting. The two storey high ceilings and wooden floors give it a nice feel. The tables and chairs are solid dark wood and the table arranged nicely, a good first impression.

For entrees, we ordered the Mixed Entree and Roti Bread with Peanut Dipping Sauce. The Mixed Entree is listed as "A splendidly tempting platter with chicken satay, spring roll, Thai fish cake, vegetable samosa & prawn roll" and guess what, thats what you get, one of each. I thought there would've been at least two of each considering those items are very cheap and they are charging $13 for the dish. The Mixed Entree is your standard fried fare and the Roti bread was ok but the Peanut Sauce was good.

Mains was famous Thai Red Duck Curry (middle dish in picture), Mango Chicken (left dish), Mor Tok (seafood curry), Phuket Platter, a seafood salad (left dish in picture) and Pineapple Fried Rice. The food arrived promptly despite the restaurant being very full. Our drinks also came quickly before the actual meal, so they get points for that. Overall the standard of the food was high and all very nice. The Duck Curry was how curry should be, nice flavours that aren't overpowered by just loads of coconut milk. The Mango Chicken was ok, with the batter of the chicken a bit too heavy and the mango puree tasted like it was from a can rather than fresh mangos. The Mor Tok seafood curry was a nice mix of seafood with strong coriander and chilli. The Pineapply Fried Rice was nicely done with that strong "wok" flavour as I call it, where its just about to burn on the wok but hasn't yet. The dish that I actually liked the most was the Phuket Platter, a seafood salad. The dish was ultra hot, broken up with sharp lemon and coriander flavours and the seafood mixed in between.

Overall, Poppy's food and service is good, but its downfall is that the serving sizes are way too small for the prices. I know quantity isn't everything but when you need about two dishes to fill you up, well thats just not right, considering the dishes cost between $15-$30. After we had finished eating, we were all still very hungry so headed off to Pancake Parlour where everyone had a large dish of pancakes for dessert.

Overall Rating: 12/20, Food and service good but serving sizes way too small.
Scores: 1-9: Unacceptable, don't bother. 10-11: Just OK,some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13: Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: An outstanding experience. 19-20: Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.