Some lunches are literally, not figuratively, forgettable. Before I could deliver this sparkling prose on Sabai Sabai, for example, I had to retrieve the crumpled receipt from the bottom of my handbag as an aide-memoire: “£95.35 total without service,” it read.
So I had, in fact, definitely been there, for about 90 minutes one recent Saturday lunchtime. The receipt also revealed that I had tried several appetisers and main courses, pandan-flavoured pancakes for pudding and a martini. Still, my memories of the place are muted. Sabai Sabai is the fourth, and most ambitious, opening in an apparently award-winning chain of Thai restaurants in the Birmingham environs: Harborne, Moseley and, about 40 miles away, Stratford-upon-Avon. This latest opening is slap-bang in Birmingham central, and a quick scoot around its website and local media plaudits position it as breathtakingly glamorous, as well as apparently being an authentic taste of Thailand.
I called Charles, who ate with me, but he also had restaurant amnesia. “The noisy one inside an insurance building with the big cocktail bar, remember?” I prompted. He still wasn’t sure. “The one with those weird pancakes full of desiccated coconut that stuck around our teeth. It was a bit like a Revolution vodka house, but they served laab bet.” I expect none of these comments to reach Sabai Sabai’s PR literature.
A challenge facing anyone opening an exciting, modern Thai restaurant these days is to gauge what type of “modern” they’re aiming for. Thai, of all the foreign cuisines to be taken to British hearts over recent decades, is currently in the midst of a grand reimagining. It’s out with the pad thais and fishcakes, the little saucers of dips, the framed posters of the Phi Phi islands, the batik wall hangings and the sounds of Chiang Mai pop star Pongsak Rattanapong mewling plaintively through Life Is Not A Fairytale. Instead, it’s in with the roasted pak ka na (Thai kale), brown crab kruang gaeng, loud and rare Skip Spence solo material on vinyl, muted cafe decor, red wine pairings, no reservations and queues out of the door. Let’s call it Hipster Thai 2.0: London Edition. In the midst of all this, we also have places such as Nonya in Glasgow serving a Thai-Malay-Chinese mashup to the soothing sounds of German deep house like Andhim, although that shut down very abruptly last week.
Sabai Sabai, after some mulling, began to re-emerge in my mind. It is mostly old-school Thai, pitching for a bit of the new stuff and ending up more like a fancy chain bar that serves Thai-style martinis and dragon punch alongside chicken satay gai, kanom jeeb chicken and prawn dumplings and deep-fat fryer favourites such as prawn toong tong, or “golden bags”, and spring rolls. My lychee martini was a watery glass of teeth-chattering sweetness with a lychee garnish, and was the kind of thing that would have thrilled the turnout at M People’s Elegant Slumming album launch.
That Saturday lunchtime, the place was relatively busy, with tables full of the sort of civilised, post-youth friendship groups who once caned it all weekend, but who now meet for double dates to nod amicably at each other’s pictures of tier-on-tier shutters.
Service was quite prompt. Or at least it was until one particular set of waiters finished their shift just after our appetisers – the aforementioned toong tong and kanom jeeb, same fillings twice, one fried – and then went outside for a ciggie. This resulted in one of those handover periods, in which there was no one on the floor at all, making me feel like staging a coup and shouting, “I’m the captain now.”
Kao pode tord – long, lumpy sweetcorn fritters on skewers – were actually rather glorious, and that laab bet (minced duck salad), although rather one-tone, did display evidence of lime and chilli. A bowl of prawn geng bha jungle curry was perfectly acceptable, with a clear broth that had a definite heat, veg and krachai, although we were now in £14-a-dish territory with a side of nondescript sticky rice at £3.95 on top. We ordered vegetarian pad see ew noodles to see if any great effort would be given to making this collision of tofu, udon and mangetout and carrot delicious. Spoiler alert: there wasn’t.
My strongest memory of Sabai Sabai was getting the bill, after the pancakes and via persistence, and realising there was no service charge added. I emptied my purse of pound coins anyway, feeling there must be someone, somewhere, in the place who deserved it. So the whole lot cost around a hundred pounds. You can’t buy memories like that.
• Sabai Sabai 7 Waterloo Street, Birmingham B2, 0121-448 3850. Open all week, noon-11pm (10.30pm Sun). About £35 a head, plus drinks and service.
Food 6/10
Atmosphere 6/10
Service 6/10
