Address: Topsy Tasty, London
Are there moments when you yearn for something different, a change of address, a change of job, a change of spouse, a change of hairstyle? I found myself in just such a mood the other day. I wanted to do something radical, to let the winds of revolution blow through my hair, or across my plate, so I went to Topsy Tasty.
In an era of naff names, Topsy Tasty is in a class of its own. So naff is it, it is classic, iconic and really rather wonderful. More wonderful still, it is a smarter cousin of the sober (in the name stakes) Bedlington Cafe in one of the more anonymous terraces of shops in one of the more anonymous parts of the Chiswick hinterland south of the Great West Road, west London.
The Bedlington achieved a certain reputation a few years ago for being among the first cafes to cross dress from greasy spoon at lunchtime to wholesome Thai neighbourhood diner in the evening. So successful has the Bedlington formula been that the same management, P Priyanu (Tim to his friends), opened Topsy Tasty, refining the concept slightly by dropping the greasy spoon bit and opening only for Thai aficionados in the evening.
The refinement of concept has not really embraced the decor, which remains defiantly basic. There are a few rather engaging black-and-white photographs of life in Old Thailand, and a curious decorative motif on the ceiling, and that's about it. So you know that your bill isn't going towards paying the fee of some fancy-pants designer. It's going towards paying for the food, drink and service, which is something of a refreshing change in itself.
The menu that was slipped into the hands of our party of seven, which included three adults under the age of 12, was slightly bewildering - 70-odd dishes long - so at one point we had a quorum in favour of leaving it to the chef. But the quorum broke up when we couldn't agree on the general guidelines to give him, so we ended up with tod man khao phod, popia tod and popia sod under starters order; pla meuk and yam ped from salads; tom yum goong soup; praew wan mu, gai ruh neua, gai pad med mamuang and prik hang, mee krop and the prosaic thick noodle with black bean sauce for main courses, with a couple of side dishes of rice and Thai fried noodles to help out in case of emergencies.
The only emergency, when push came to letting out the top button of the trousers, was in my habitual over-ordering and the dimensions of each dish, which can only be described as generous. The yam ped, aka, duck salad, presented me with a pile the size of a small haystack of stuff and that went crunch in the mouth. I had no difficulty in disposing of it, as it was buzzing with those sensations and flavours I associate with Thai food - the clean freshness of lime, the bright burn of chilli, the whiff of anise, coriander and ginger - backing the plangent basso of boom-boom flavoured duck.
Xerxes' tom yum goong, or hot and sour prawn soup, if anything, buzzed even more than the yam ped. Indeed, he became quite red in the face with the effort of eating it, and finally gave up as the river of sweat rolling down his forehead threatened to burst its banks. I took over at that point and, once I had got over the initial fiery impact, was impressed how the flavours of lemongrass and citrus leaves broadened out and diluted the chilli heat to turn it into a deliciously refreshing slurp.
Other high points were tod man khao phod, which turned out to be crisp, flat fritters of sweetcorn, pork and red curry paste, which you dipped in one of those ubiquitous sweet/sour/hot dips; the noodles with black bean sauce, which my daughter said was a bit spicy for her liking, "but everything in it really tasted strongly"; the mee krop, a dish in which crisp, fried noodles stuck out like tapers all over the place, turning to sensuous soft folds by the tamarind-based sauce; and the pla meuk, a squid salad, which was exactly as squid salads should be: light, juicy and tasting of squid.
Popia sod and popia tod were giant variations on a spring roll theme. They looked like caramel-coloured bedrolls, and were nearly the same size, cut into bite-sized pillows. The under 12s didn't take kindly to what they regarded as an aberration; the rest found them splendid, the extra filling producing high yields on terms of flavour. More disappointmenting were praew wan mu, the sweet-and-sour dish, which was undistinguished, and gai pad med, mamuang and prik hang, chicken with cashew nuts, which was a study in brown murk.
In the end, we leant back and stared at the ruins of the dishes on the table, inert with the effort of eating. At a rough estimate, I'd say that about a quarter of the food was still there, so you could argue that £26 or so of the bill of £103.45 was wasted. I wouldn't argue it so. The bill included an uncountable number of Fantas, Cokes, lemonades, four Thai beers and a bottle of perfectly judged white wine - the only one on offer, as it happened, but you can bring your own (corkage, 80p per person). The cheapest full-scale dish on the menu is £3.50, the most expensive £6.50. Topsy Tasty is, as Charles Campion put it to me, "good Thai nosebag at wallet-cherishing prices". That seems about it, for a change
