Tom Phat

That whup, whup, whup noise you hear is the sound of the world spinning faster. Our lives getting fuller. Our fragile grip on what makes living fun - smelling the roses, kicking the footy, breaking bread with the one we love - slip, slip, slipping away.

We graze alone. We rush from one appointment to another. Intimacy is reduced to passing kisses and snatched moments. It's as if the process of living is getting in the way of actually living.

This could make Brunswick's Tom Phat either an oasis or the most annoying place in the world. Especially as those crossed-legged young women sitting on the wide, low, padded bench by the window lounge for hours, looking as if they haven't got a care in the world. Bloody students, probably - or even worse, dole bludgers - judging by the ragtag and bobtail outfits that look as if they've been assembled by a colour-blind, op-shop granny.

"Breathe," says the woman I love, "you're just jealous." And she's right - I've always reckoned I'd look good in mismatched florals and Thai fisherman's pants.

She pushes a plate of corn fritters my way as consolation. Crunchy little buggers loaded with kernels, with the occasional caramel edge. They are very good dredged through the decent (bottled) sweet chilli sauce. Equally fine are the crisp wontons stuffed with a steaming, moist mix of tofu, shitake and spring onions. These are commendable highlights in a meal at this 18-month-old cafe, with its trendy Thai menu and rather well-made Coffee Supreme coffees.

The decor is roughly polished concrete, compact wooden tables, matched stools and a ceiling panelled with rush matting, from which green-metal industrial lights dangle. You'll find a blackboard list of specials on the '70s-looking panel opposite, painted in 17 tones of mushroom. Perhaps wraps filled with Thai fish cakes or marinated chook, or something more substantial such as salt-and-pepper silken tofu or pork belly with chilli caramel.

The normal menu comes in a retro, padded folder with groovy type. A page of freshly squeezed juices is followed by dishes for breakfast, which is very popular here and doesn't start until 9am, naturally. The rest of the menu generally treads the south-east Asian backpacker trail.

We order a very presentable beef curry in a mild peanut sauce with sweet potatoes, eggplant and broccoli, topped with fresh beanshoots and a little sweet-vinegar cucumber salad, which gives it some kick.

There's also tempeh, which comes smothered in sweet-molasses Malaysian kecap manis, the sticky soy-ness of which works well with the accompanying Asian coleslaw. The salad is a bit lacking in the promised Asian herbs but has a fresh crunch - something that's missing in another, chilli-hot salad of green papaya batons, peanuts and tired-looking green bean pieces. No faulting the perfectly cooked, blanched prawns that come with it though.
This isn't Longrain - but then, we aren't paying Longrain prices, either.

What Tom Phat does is make a fair fist of light, bright, generally fresh-tasting Thai-style food in a funky cafe oasis. No wonder so many locals seem to love it, or that by the time we leave, the sound of whup, whup, whupping has dimmed to a slow whisper.

By Matt Preston