Cher

Thai

22 North St Clapham Common Old Town, SW4 0HB

££

New Thai eatery Cher opened in Clapham Old Town this year: a difficult year for us all, but especially the restaurant industry. Clapham is awash with good restaurants, Carmen for tapas, Tsunami for Japanese, Eco for pizza. One thing, however, that it was distinctly lacking was a Thai: enter Cher. I’m not sure if the owners hold a particular torch for the Goddess of pop, but I’d like to BELIEVE they do…

My Mum and I are big fans of Thai food, and wanting to keep small business like these alive, we booked to go for her birthday lunch in early December. The restaurant is lovely and bright, with enough tables to have atmosphere but small enough to still feel intimate and home grown. Our friendly waitress showed us to our table, as we took in the mix-match of Thai and Christmas décor embellished around the interiors. There was an eclectic mix of EDM Covers of Christmas hits in the background, a typical choice in many beach bars I visited in Thailand (EDM covers, minus the Christmas bit).

To order, I already knew exactly what I wanted. After propositioning this to the table of 3, they all eventually gave in and let me order for everyone. We started with some Prawn Crackers (£3.95), Thai Dim Sum (£5.95) and Prawn Tempura (£6.95). Whilst I felt the dim sum and tempura to be decently priced, I couldn’t help but thinking the crackers were a little expensive. I always prefer the greasy, pretty tasteless white crackers anyway as opposed to the proper, brown and peppery kind you find in restaurants. The dumplings were tender and flavoursome – a minced pork and prawn number where you could taste both components, whilst the tempura was of the best kinds: soft prawns encased in a hard battered shell. There are little things more delicious!

From there, I ordered a Deep Fried Whole Seabass (£14.95) and a Papaya Salad (£7.95), followed by a Duck Red Curry (£9.95), a Prawn Pad Thai (£10.95) and a portion of Sticky Rice (£3.50). The seabass was cooked well, although didn’t have as much meat on it as others tried at Som Saa and The Begging Bowl, the tamarind also became a little bit overpowering eventually, and I think this would have been better served with a simpler sauce. The papaya salad was as good as it always it – fresh, sour, punchy, spicy flavours literally burst on your tastebuds at one simple bite: the sweet papaya complemented with salty fish sauce, earthy peanuts and mellowed out with tomatoes. To get this dish wrong would be a sin. It is a food of the God’s!

After a promising start, it was no surprise that the red curry and pad Thai were equally as good. The flavours were all there, although the red curry could have had a few more vegetables/pieces of duck, and the pad Thai could have been a little fresher (more lime and coriander, less tamarind sauce). Both were still a hit, just I have had better. The sticky rice was all I’d hoped for, the type I would never be able to make myself, and served in a sweet bamboo container, encased in a plastic pocket for steaming. We washed it all down with a bottle of Prosecco (£30) to celebrate, which again was nice and reasonably priced for bubbles in a restaurant.

The bill came to £107 in total, and it was a lot of food for 3 people. We finished it, of course, but you could probably have done with one or two less plates than we had. Service was friendly: balancing attentive and relaxed perfectly. Although they have a website, you cannot book online and must call: a nice experience when the happiest man on earth books you in! Overall, a really pleasant and tasty Thai experience. Come here for the traditional plates you’re used to: it’s not going to introduce you to anything you didn’t know before, but it does the regular stuff really well.