Formerly known as Hom Cafe, now with new owners, new name and a new menu, Mellow Restaurant and Cafe is aiming to tantalise with Thai classics with some western fusion thrown in. It's not a huge restaurant but there's plenty of seating for small groups, inside or out.

The menu is 6 pages long, with breakfast, lunch and dinner options. You'll find the usual Thai dishes we've come to know and love in Darwin, along with pasta and mixture of western turf dishes, there's a random tandoori curry thrown in for good measure too. Kind of a weird mix but more on that later.

First up we had the fish cakes. Everything is made on site, no store bought stuff here I'm told. I'm not particularly fond of fish cakes, but I did appreciate the fresh lime leaf and subtle kick of chili.

The fried fish with ginger sauce came out next ($24.90), very intricately prepared with thin slices of ginger and various other vegetables. Looks like a big mess from the photo but it's presentation is better appreciated in person. Good price for the amount of fish and ingredients on the plate, particularly compared to the serving sizes get at other restaurants around town (I'm pointing fingers at Yum Cha on Cavenagh Street).

Yellow curry landed shortly afterwards. Presenting with a nice creamy sauce without being overly coconut milk heavy, almost Chinese like but still distinctly Thai. I hate it when you get a curry that has the root vegetables barely cooked, thankfully not the case here as the potatoes were cooked perfectly and the addition of pumpkin was much welcomed. More on the mild spectrum of spiciness compared to a red or a green, which suits me just fine.

The paw paw salad ($15.90) you can get either Laos style (which includes shrimp paste) or in regular Thai fashion. We went the latter and were very impressed. The dressing had a wonderful depth and again, very well prepared. A few grades above the ones you get at the weekend markets, twice the price obviously so you'd expect it to be better!

My least favourite dish of the night was the Pataya chicken with chili sauce ($21.90). I couldn't taste much in the way of any marinade and the meat was dry, even for chicken breast. Looks good, but didn't deliver in the taste department. Maybe needed to spend more time marinating.

I'm a big fan of eggs, so I was keen to try the deep fried golden egg with tamarind sauce ($18.90). The sauce wasn't as sweet as I was expecting, and could probably have more tamarind flavour to it, otherwise the eggs were nice and soft with a crunch outside. Nicely presented also with a pretty carved rose and lashings of dried chili and fried shallots placed on top. The chefs certainly have artistic flair when it comes to plating.

Final Thai dish of the night was seas food lard na ($19.90), one of my favourite noodle dishes. The sauce was probably a touch too salty for my preferences (not a huge fan of salt I am), but the seafood (mussels, fish, prawn, squid, scallops) was wonderfully cooked and there was a generous amount of it too.

I mentioned they do western dishes as well, so we got a spaghetti bolognese for the toddler Darwin Foodies reviewer at the table. Now any parent knows that you're going to be ordering this dish quite a lot when dining out with children and you'll be finished off the three quarters of the plate they didn't touch, so I've had my fare share of it. I thought it was going to be terrible given this is first and foremost a Thai restaurant, but I was pleasantly surprised. Perhaps not a completely authentic bolognese, but damn it was good! I liked how they baked some cheese into it, and then threw more on top. I kept pinching this off my daughter's plate when she wasn't looking.

Overall I was quite impressed. As was my wife, who is admittedly not a big fan of Thai, but she was more rewarding of an appraisal than I. Definitely worth a visit if you're after some Thai for lunch or dinner.

Contact details

Address: Shop 10/ 69 Mitchell Street, Darwin. (Next to Mitchelli's Pizza / across from The Tap Bar)
Phone: 08 8981 2922
Open: Breakfast, lunch and dinner every day
Alcohol: Fully licensed
Website: www.facebook.com/mellowdarwin