Today has been a really hot and humid day in Melbourne. Not knowing what to get for lunch, we decided to head north eastern suburb called Mitcham. There is a new Thai restaurant called Horapa. A place that has been recommended by a friend who lives in the nearby suburb.
It wasn’t easy to find the location of the restaurant as it was pretty much hidden from the main road. I missed my exit turn, and had to do a U turn to get to the restaurant.
It is located at 548 Whitehorse Rd, Mitcham VIC 3132
Upon arriving, I found out that the restaurant was very small. It was more like a take away shop than an eat-in restaurant. It has only 6 tables and 12 chairs. So it can pretty much fit for up to 12 people. I didn’t see any high chairs for toddlers either, so it may not be friendly for a toddler to eat-in.
The air conditioner looks old and it wasn’t cool enough to cool down the inside restaurant from the hot weather outside. So it felt like eating in a non-air conditioned restaurant in Thailand.
You can order and pay in advance or later before you leave. I chose to pay later as we might want to order some more in between.
Having heard from a friend who lives in the nearby suburb, the chef of the restaurant used to work as a chef at Ying Thai Restaurant; a well-known Thai restaurant in Richmond and Carlton in which the cripsy skin pork salad was their killer dish. I was hopeful that I could get the same crispy skin pork at Horapa.
So we ordered the Crispy Skin Pork Salad (Yum Sam Grob), the Stir-fried Chinese Broccoli with Crispy Pork Belly (Pad Ka Nar Moo Grob), and two bowls of steam rice.
We didn’t wait long for the dishes to come out. I guess we were the only people at the present time.
The Yum Sam Grob was exactly what I was expecting. It has the same taste and flavour as in Ying Thai … but this one is a little bit cheaper than Ying Thai. The stir-fried was good but it wasn’t really my highlight.
Overall, the restaurant is highly recommended. The only drawbacks are the size of the restaurant, and the Air Conditioner. Horapa is new. They had just started opening the restaurant for about a month. They told me that the previous restaurant was a Filipino slash Thai restaurant.
