Restaurants

By Guy Dimond

No Thai restaurant is complete without a portrait of the king, but Rosa's has a picture of The King. Elvis Presley met King Bhumipol and Queen Sirikit of Thailand while filming 'GI Blues', and a portrait in the window proudly commemorates the event. It is just one sign that Rosa's is a refreshing departure from the norm.

Although the dishes are (mostly) the familiar roll call, there is a freshness and honesty about the cooking. Take, for example, the som tam. The grated green (ie. unripened) papaya of this salad is often substituted with cheaper carrot or cabbage in the UK, to bulk it out. Not here: the Rosa version is all papaya, mixed up with long beans, cherry tomatoes, chilli, small shrimps and, in this case, cashew nuts. The flavour was in the style of central Thailand – that is, sweet and mild, and lacking sufficient sour notes for our taste. This was easily remedied: a waiter brought a saucer of fish sauce (nam pla) on request, to drizzle.

The dish called ta lae pad cha is a stir-fry of seafood, with the clear and distinctive ginger-like flavour of lesser galangal shining through the yellow chilli paste and whole black peppercorns. Pad thai was, curiously, the only slightly disappointing dish we tried, in that it was an average version.

Pad makhuea (stir-fried aubergine) was a stunner though: meltingly soft chunks of aubergine, cloaked in a yellow bean sauce with chilli, garlic and crisp leaves of sweet (ie European) basil. The arrangement of our other dishes was, in the Thai way, quite beautiful, with carved vegetables and garnishes in greater abundance than you might expect for dishes costing around six or seven quid.

Rosa's has a shared table set-up that rewards booking, or early arrival if you're in a small group. It's good-looking for a low-budget place, with wooden architraves cunningly turned into wall sculptures, attractive lighting and a moodier, more spacious dining area in the basement. Go when you’re pining for the tastes of Thailand.

Time Out Issue 1988: September 25-Oct 1 2008