BangPop

35 South Wharf Promenade, South Wharf, 9245 9800

My score: 3.5/5

If ever a restaurant’s name made its intentions clear, it’s BangPop, a playful version of Bangkok. ‘Bang’ because it’s a noisy place that pushes a good time not a long time. Also, ‘bang’ is Thai for a town on a river and BangPop is at South Wharf, a reinvented, promising Yarra bank village. ‘Pop’ because the place is contemporary and light-hearted and a background bass beat is delivered with a punchy rhythm that’s picked up by the food and service.

The food is nothing revolutionary if you’ve eaten at places like Cookie or Colonel Tan but it’s more spicy and frisky than some of Melbourne’s dumbed-down Thai. The kitchen team includes Thai cooks and fine-dining-trained locals making for fairly authentic flavours and presentation that’s neat but not slick. Snacky street food includes glossy slices of pork neck with rendered fat, a crackling glaze, sticky rice and chilli dipping sauce. Eat it with fingers then clean up with the teatowels that serve as napkins. My pick of the larger dishes is the duck leg, falling off the bone into a toasty red curry. The green papaya salad is a wet herby tangle with less fish sauce than I’d like but it’s easy to adjust the flavour balance with the condiments on every table. Desserts taste fine but are samey, as though conjured in a MasterChef challenge where the contestants only had mangos and coconuts.

The design is poppy: vintage bikes rim the perimeter, the riverside terrace is mod-grassed and the communal tables have peg holes to hold movable partitions. These planks aren’t high enough to offer privacy but at least they discourage adjacent diners from swiping your fish cakes. The wine list is as sympathetic to the chilli as grapes know how to be. There’s also a cracking cocktail list: the Gin Pop with lemongrass and lime sorbet is a jazzy joy and the Tom Yam Siam mixes vodka and chilli-spiked va-va-voom.

BangPop is owned by zeitgeist-chaser Paul Mathis and it’s where Sharing House briefly shone, next to his more austere Japanese restaurant Akachochin. The newcomer is fast and cheap and reminds me of Chocolate Buddha, the buzzy Japanesque joint Mathis opened at Federation Square 10 years ago. There as here, he took an Asian cuisine and cleverly spun it into an experience. BangPop isn’t a serious food destination but it could be a serious winner.

See their website.

More street food:

Hanoi Hannah, 180 High Street, Prahran, 9939 5181
The rice paper rolls are so fresh and good here. I love sitting in the window and munching on the silken tofu roll with pickles and shiitake mushrooms.

Acland Street Cantina, 2 Acland Street, St Kilda, 9536 1175
Like a Mexican theme park only crunchy, there’s a colourful all-day diner out front and a moody salon at rear. Try the bacon-wrapped hotdogs.

B’Stilla, 30 Bray Street, South Yarra, 9826 2370
Moroccan food is the focus at this new restaurant from Mamasita’s Jason Jones and small bites include rgahaif (filled pastries with spinach and eggplant or oxtail) and the namesake pigeon pastry with cinnamon and saffron.

First published in The Age, April 28, 2013