Thai $ $$$ CRITIC’S PICK First, let’s manage expectations. You can’t book a table at Ama, order a cocktail or slide into a booth. The kitchen is likely to run out of your first three choices if you don’t get there early, and nothing costs over $20.
It’s not exactly your average Surry Hills restaurant. Sisters Rowena and Kate Chansiri first opened the pup-friendly Ickle Cafe in Kingsgrove in 2022, after Kate had been roasting coffee for four years – so what chance their next step would be a noodle bar in Surry Hills? It happened almost by accident. When their mother made a special visit from Bangkok last year, she brought her own mother’s recipe for Chinese Thai beef noodle soup with her, a traditional family taste she had grown up with since the 1960s.
“Ama’s” (grandmother’s) soup was soon on high rotation – and so much so, says Rowena, that they had the bright idea of doing a small two-night dinner pop-up in the cafe, to share it with others. That was a hit, prompting the pair to look further afield for a permanent home for the beefy soup noodles. They found a light-filled, glass-fronted premises in a side street of Surry Hills, and opened in September.
The kitchen is tiny, the dining space is simply but brightly furnished with red lanterns and tiles. Family knick-knacks sit on one wall, and shelves of produce, noodles and bottle sauces line up on another. But the star of the show is the beef noodle soup ($19.
90). Damn, it’s good. Noodles sit at the.