Sydney might be the best Thai food city outside Thailand, which makes a short list hard to write and easy to argue about. I am starting with two rooms nobody argues about, drawn from Broadsheet's Thai guide and the Good Food Guide's awards. The longer list lives in the app, where it updates as people like you rate the rooms.

Chat Thai

When the late Amy Chanta opened Chat Thai in Darlinghurst in 1989, she brought Bangkok flavours Sydney had never tasted. Broadsheet calls the street food here fine-dining quality at very fair prices, and three decades of queues agree. This is the trailblazer. Every Thai list in Sydney stands on it.

Viand

Annita Potter took the 2023 Good Food Guide Chef of the Year award for this room, and the tasting menus show why. If your reference point for Thai is takeaway pad see ew, Viand will rearrange your assumptions in one sitting.

This list is deliberately short while I eat my way through the rest of the contenders. The live rankings in hungr already run deeper.