Sweet Rice, 102 Millers Rd, Altona North. Phone: 9315 3691

Having enjoyed our debut meal at Sweet Rice in Altona, with Consider The Sauce buddy Keri for company, we are keen to return to explore the menu further.

Truth is, yours truly dominated the ordering procedure on that visit, and not all that skillfully, either … we ended up with a lovely meal that was nevertheless dominated by fried items.

This time around, we’re joined by our lovely next door neighbours, Rob and Ming.

I am determined to order the green mango fish – for the simple reason it’s been tipped as the menu highlight by Andy of Krapow, which specialises in Thai food.

That’s good enough for me!

Other than that, I tell Ming and Rob, I plan to take  strictly hands-off approach – they can figure it out with Bennie.

So that’s what we do … and we have fine old time.

No entrees, five mains including a salad, rice.

The quantities and quality are all pretty much spot on, and our choices arrive in as quick time as can be expected..

Grilled beef salad ($9.90) has exactly the sort of zingy flavour, without much by way of a chilli hit, we are expecting.

But in other ways this dish puzzles us, as we are all used to Thai salads being made of much more finely chopped ingredients, or with meat that is finely shredded or comes in a crumbly mince form.

Here, the beef is simply larger slices of wok-cooked meat and the vegetables are equally large pieces of lettuce, cherry tomatoes and onion slices.

Nice, though.

Red curry chicken ($9) is smooth and creamy, with plenty of chicken and vegetables, including cherry tomatoes, capsicum and juilenned bamboo shoots.

But it seems almost shockingly mild in its seasoning levels.

Nice, too, but is this another case of an eatery catering to suburban takeaway expectations, perceived or otherwise?

Green mango fish ($12.90) – thanks, Andy! – is the big flavour hit of the night, even winning favour with the usually fish-hating Bennie.

A more than adequate array of crispy-battered and finely cooked fish fillets (we forget to ask what kind) are buried beneath a cheerful wig of mango strands, onion, chilli rings and coriander.

There’s a big lemon hit and everyone is happy.

You’ll be unsurprised to know that sweet and sour pork ($9, top photo) is a Bennie nomination.

But you may be surprised, as we are, that this dish – a Thai twist on a Chinese cliche – goes down a treat.

There’s little by way of sweet or sour, but the sticky sauce goes well with the light, ungreasy and nicely chewy battered pork pieces.

Prawns with chilli and basil sauce ($10.50) provides, at long last, the spice hit for which we have seemingly been yearning.

Indeed, the chilli levels are a bit too high for Bennie, but it’s all good and there’s plenty of prawns.

Oddly enough, I must have been suffering from chilli deprivation, because the remnants of the red curry chicken taste better after a run-in with high spice levels.

We’ve enjoyed a really nice meal that has never really reached stellar heights but that for sure places Sweet Rice in a niche significantly above your average suburban Thai restaurants.

Matched with incredible prices – our dinner for four, including three soft drinks, just barely tops $60 – and it’s easy and right to classify Sweet Rice as a true gem.

Thanks to Rob and Ming for the company and lending us their tastebuds!

Sweet Rice, 102 Millers Rd, Altona North. Phone: 9315 3691

We arrive for our early and long-awaited dinner at Sweet Rice to find a rather dowdy cheap eats cafe.

The atmosphere seems a little gloomy, perhaps because the place is empty except for us and is barely warm on a very cold evening. And even though the lighting glare is soon to play havoc with photography.

Happily, by the time we are well into our meal the room has filled considerably, presenting a much more merry impression.

We are delighted about being joined by Consider The Sauce regular Keri – for the fine company, for the extra breadth three folks confer on the ordering process and the fact she gets into the swing of things by reminding me on a couple of occasions to take photos.

I get that way sometimes when I’m hungry and excited about eating in a new place!

The food here is cheap by any standards – by the standards of Thai restaurants in Melbourne, it seems exceptionally cheap.

Making us more excited is the fact there are quite a few novel items on the menu.

Some things we want to order – spicy lamb roti, beef noodle soup (whatever that is in a Thai context) – are unavailable.

The vegetable curry puffs ($4.50) are nice enough. But they’re so tiny that they seem almost all pastry and the filling gets lost in the jostle.

Keri’s no big of fish cakes; neither am I, to tell you the truth.

But these ($5.90), in my experience, are as good as we’ve had.

In this case, the rubbery effect is rather pleasing and it’s obvious by the internal greenery of sliced spring onion that these are house-generated.

The chicken satay skewers ($6.90) are ordered by command of Bennie; the rest of the team is happy to go along.

He loves them; his dad finds the chicken meat OK but a little fibrous.

But it’s the sauce that impresses – not so much peanutty, but with a lovely flavour that has a tang of curry about it.

Soft shell crab (top photo, $12.90) is Keri’s choice and it’s an outright winner.

The tiny crabs are tender and a little crunchy at the same time, while the batter and seasoning seem very much along the same lines of those found on salt-and-pepper calamari and chicken ribs in Malaysian joints.

Chu chee curry fish ($9.50) is, I’m later told, like a cross between a red curry and a panang curry.

Some rudimentary online sleuthing indicates that is very much the case, while I find one reference that maintains that it “is based on a red curry sauce and distinguished by the use of kaffir lime leaves and basil – it is a thick spicy sauce that is different from other Thai curries because of the texture“.

In any case, it’s delightful that in our dish the battered fish (we forget to forget to ask the species) is both crispy and covered in the gravy.

The accompanying vegetables are both vibrant of colour and lovely to eat.

Only problem is the parsimonious quantity of sauce.

When I’d earlier asked about the pork shank ($12.90), I’d been told it is deep fried.

We thought: Why not?

Still, we are surprised by the sheer size and imposing presence of our dish. Definitely a first for all of us!

The whole thing has been rubbed with five-spice and cinnamon.

There’s quite a lot of meat, which is pleasantly tasty and chewy in a nice way but a long way short of fall-off-the-bone tender.

The crackling is dry but actually quite tough, but yours truly gobbles a fair amount of it anyway.

Just as well there’s three of us – this dish would be ludicrous for a single diner and a bit on the over-the-top side for a couple. It’s made, we suggest, for group dining.

The presence of some unusual items on the Sweet Rice menu may have led us – oh, OK, me! – astray.

Had we stuck with a more orthodox order that included, say, a tangy salad, a regular curry and a vegetable-heavy vegetable wok dish, we may have enjoyed a more well-rounded dinner.

However, despite some oddities along the way, we’ve seen and tasted enough to reckon Sweet Rice may provide not only some of Melbourne’s cheapest Thai food but also some of its very best. There’s a home-cooked vibe here that defies any expectations of sauce-out-of-a-bottle.

The service was obliging and our food arrived in good time.

It’ll be interesting to see what the experts at krapow think about the place when they get around to it.

Ms Baklover at Footscray Food Blog is certainly a fan.

Thanks to Keri for being part of the team!