New Soi 38 Thai restaurant Melbourne open now

Melbourne’s hit Thai restaurant Soi 38 played hard to get for many years, tucked in the depths of a multistorey carpark and open only at lunch. Then the queues came, and it was much easier to spot which laneway led you to the Bangkok street-food people raved about.

With its new home, Soi has regained a little of its elusiveness, which is surprising, given that it’s part of a shiny overhaul of the former Tivoli Arcade. To find Soi 38, you’ll go down a laneway and through a hard-to-find door which is, fittingly, opposite a carpark. Once inside, it feels just like a canteen.

The new space seats 240 people, a step up from the 160 of the last site and a head-spinning evolution for a business that started as a pop-up selling one dish: boat noodles, a robust Bangkok dish then mostly unknown in Melbourne.

“We couldn’t afford a fridge back then. We had to use a big esky!” says co-owner Top Piyaphanee.

From that one dish, Soi opened in a Little Collins Street carpark for lunchtime noodles, then added grilled items, salads and raw dishes for dinner, and took over a second space in the carpark.

“It’s breathtaking. I didn’t know it was going to get to this one day,” says Piyaphanee.

After 10 years among boomgates and ticket machines, he and wife Tang Piyaphanee had to find a new site last year when the carpark was listed for sale.

Opening at its new Bourke Street home on January 2, the new Soi 38 carries plenty of its history. Grey floors and exposed ceilings are offset by brightly coloured metal tables and stools, which fans will recognise from the original. Other mementos include the noodle cart from which Soi’s first bowls of noodles were served and the Thai tuk-tuk of the last dining room, which had to be craned into this building.

Having a loyal fan base only turned up the pressure on opening day, something the team felt in full force at the new digs. Despite being Melbourne’s quietest week of the year, there were queues at both lunch and dinner, the kitchen wasn’t receiving orders due to an internet failure, and the team had to cook on a series of electric cooktops and gas bottles while its brand-new gas kitchen sat idle, awaiting a meter installation.

But Piyaphanee is just grateful for the support.

“It was so cool to see familiar faces [on day one],” he says.

While the team won’t have a gas meter and a permanent liquor licence for several weeks, when they do arrive it will usher in the next evolution of Soi 38.

Stir-fries and other wok-cooked dishes from Piyaphanee’s childhood in Bangkok can be served for the first-time. Expect the flat rice noodle dish guay tiew kua gai, which features chicken, preserved squid, egg and Sriracha sauce, with the Soi 38 twist of fried chicken skin on top. Pad krapow, the holy basil and chilli stir-fry, will be made with dry-aged beef for more complexity. At lunch, stir-fries on rice will join the noodle menu.

A large bar can dispense cocktails loaded with Thai aromatics, and a dessert station is set up to cook the tiny coconut milk pancakes kanom krok.

For now, the team will serve the regular Soi menu (noodles at lunch; larger menu at dinner) cooked on their MacGyver-style setup. Coconut water, Thai milk tea and other non-alc drinks will be available.