D'elephant Thai Street Food, Glen Waverley by Bureaucrat

It's rare to find me inside a shopping centre.  Sprawling mega-complexes are just not my thing. But I have to admit the better food offerings and the nicer facilities and decor do intrigue me enough to venture forth into Casa Capitalism.  

Another hot Melbourne day, and not wanting to cook, saw me take refuge at The Glen's refurbished food court.  The tempting aromas coming from D'elephant made it easy for us to decide what to order. 

I went for a special dish on the menu.  A grilled chicken with rice and soup.  This was kinda like the Thai version of the Hainanese chicken.  We were very impressed with this dish - so much so that I came back later that week to have it again!  The chicken was tender on the inside and had a lovely crisp skin - yummy!  You can actually hear the crispiness when you bite into the chicken.  I also liked how they carved the chicken for easy eating.  The chicken came with three dipping sauces - kecap manis (sweet sticky soy), sweet chilli and this housemade green one (by memory, I think it was Thai basil and lemon).  

The rice was cooked in chicken broth and the steamed veggies (Chinese broccoli) was tender and fresh.  The bowl of chicken broth was nicely flavoured (I'm pretty sure it was the real deal - i.e., it wasn't made from anything artificial).  The dish also came with some pickled ginger.  

For an extra 40 cents per item, you can order a range of nibblies to go with your dish.  I chose a chicken spring roll.  This was also very good - a proper minced chicken filling with a good amount of it too (I'm so cheesed off that so many places skimp on the filling in their spring rolls).  Crispy and not oily considering it was deep fried.

The Lawyer went for the prawn tom yum soup noodles.  This was good but not as good as the grilled chicken rice.  It wasn't too spicy and came with about four or five reasonably plump prawns.

We also got a chilled Thai milk tea to go with our meal.  I'm not sure how these are meant to taste, but this tasted like those powdered sachet of sweetened milk teas you can buy from Asian shops.

Verdict

We really liked it.

Mid value.

Overall

I'd say this is one of the better options at The Glen's food court.  I've already been back a few times to eat the grilled chicken (it's that good!) and I'm very sure that I'll be back again.  I would like to try out a few more items but only when they stop serving the special grilled chicken.

There's also D'elephant located at nearby Kingsway.  This is a proper restaurant and offers a bigger range in food and drink.

Find it at

D'elephant Thai Street Food
The Glen Shopping Centre
Springvale Road
Glen Waverley VIC 3150