Riversdale Thai, Camberwell by Bureaucrat

Riversdale Thai is located on Riversdale Road in Camberwell, with a tram track alongside it, a bus stop in front of it, and a train line next to it. Having found myself in that part of town one chilly night, I had wandered in for a spot of takeaway. The decor what you’d expect of a suburban restaurant in this area – smart and neat with plenty of Thai-style furnishings.  Despite getting there just before 6pm on a weekday, there was already a table of diners. 

While I do enjoy Thai food, the fact that I’m bit a of a chilli wimp means that I tend to order dishes that aren’t loaded with chillies.  Thank god for pad Thai!  Pad Thai is a stir fried rice noodle dish that was invented as part of a noodle competition in Thailand during the 1930s.  So the story goes, the government wanted to reduce domestic consumption of their rice exports (presumably because they were getting a better price on the export market) and was trying to get people to eat more noodles instead.  Pad Thai became so popular that it's become a quasi-national dish.  I like this story, but am a bit puzzled by it since it requires rice to make rice noodles.

Anyhoo, the noodles here were good and reasonable.  The noodles were reasonably plentiful, good savoury-sour/tart flavour from the soy and tamarind-based sauce, lots of tiny nuggets of firm tofu and beanshoots, and a sprinkling of toasted peanuts.  My minor quibbles are that I would have liked a bit more chicken and more eggs in the dish.

Our other dish was Pad Khing w beef, which is a veggie and beef stir fry with ginger.  A nice mix of seasonal veg that were lightly cooked so that they stayed crisp and crunchy, lots of thinly sliced ginger gave the dish a mellow warmth, but it wasn’t as zingy as you’d expect it to be.  There was more beef in this dish than chicken in the pad Thai. 

We got a large serve of rice to go with it.

Verdict

Food - 7

Ambiance - 7

Service - 7

Price – 6.5

Overall

A reasonable suburban Thai restaurant.  The food is reasonable, the service is reasonable and the price is fairly reasonable (I would have liked the serves to be a wee bigger for the price).  

Address

Riversdale Thai

655 Riversdale Road
Camberwell 3124
Telephone: 9077 7782