Michelin-awarded Go-Benz and self-serve Super Dim Sum in Phuket, Thailand

So your next Thailand trip involves you arriving late in Phuket and leaving the next morning? This post has your stomach covered. Two amazing meals. Unlike anything you've ever had. For cheap. We're talking late night comfort food (with Michelin Guide kudos) and a choose-your-own dim sum adventure. Strap in.

Our Thailand trip last November kicked off with a late night touchdown in Phuket. We checked in, dumped our bags and headed straight back out to Go-Benz Phuket.


Go-Benz Phuket

Michelin Guide recommended pork with broth, rice and noodles 

Go-Benz isn't fancy. But it's not supposed to be. This massive roadside restaurant in the heart of Phuket Old Town is famous for its dry congee. Say what? Basically it means a bowl of rice topped with fixings served with soup on the side.

Go-Benz has such a reputation they were recently awarded a Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand, recognising its "simple yet skillful cooking for under £28 or €40".

When they open at dinner time, queues tend to snake around the block. It's said the best time to arrive is after 10pm, when you're more likely to score a table immediately.


Open kitchen action

The open kitchen is worth a look, both to work out what to order as well as a way to whet your appetite. Witness organised chaos as dishes are churned out at a furious pace. Tongs are skittering noodles are plunged into stock and every minute there's another waterfall of soup being ladled into a bowl.


Dry boiled rice with pork and soup 60 THB (about AU$2.65)

The dry congee comes with all kinds of porky goodness. That includes a pork mince meatball, pork intestines, pork liver, crunchy roast pork and a tumble of deep-fried shallots. Some people like to pour all the soup straight into their bowl. I prefer to go the other way, dipping spoonfuls of rice into the soup.


Crispy pork 120 THB (about AU$5.30)

The crispy pork is so good you'll want to splurge on a whole plate of it. Do it. The ribbons of fat are cooked to a melting softness, just enough to lubricate the tender flesh crowned with a tile of crunchy crackling.


Rice noodle rolls 60 THB (about AU$2.65)
Pork organ soup 60 THB (about AU$2.65)

The pork soup might seem like a support act but you soon realise it's the secret star of the show. It's the foundation of every dish, its sweet and peppery porkiness proving more and more addictive with every spoonful. It's the base for pork and kuay jub noodles, scrolls of silky rice noodles that furl up on themselves, as well as the pork organ soup, an offal lover's dream. The huge hunks of pork  blood are particularly nourishing.


Dry boiled rice with pork and soup 60 THB (about AU$2.65)
Boiled pork ribs 60 THB (about AU$2.65)

And for those who love meat on the bone, get the boiled pork rib soup. There's plenty of flesh on those bones.


Go-Benz dining space


Roadside dining


Fresh jackfruit

And on your way back to the hotel, stop by the late night trading fruit stall for your Vitamin C needs.


Longans - and our green mango being peeled and cut for free

We went crazy over wax jambus, pomelo and green mangoes (AU$3.20 per kilo!). Another tip: fruit shops in Thailand will usually peel and cut your fruit for free. Talk about service!

Super Dim Sum

Dining area 

Early start? How about dim sum? But not as you know it.


Self-serve dim sum plates 30baht (about AU$1.30) each

Super Dim Sum combines self-service gluttony with a la minute luxury. That means you get to choose whichever dishes you want, and have them steamed to order.


Dumpling baskets 30 THB (about AU$1.30) each

Buns and dumplings are already stacked into steamer baskets.


So. Many. Choices.

In the chiller cabinet you'll find a dizzying array of mini metal plates holding everything from sweet corn to prawns to mushrooms to fish balls.


Load up your breakfast tray

Choose whatever you like and transfer them to a tray. Every tray and steamer basket is the same price: 30 THB or about AU$1.30 each.


Towers of steaming bamboo baskets

When you hand over your tray to the kitchen, each metal plate is placed into a steamer basket. All the baskets are then stacked into a tower and tagged with your docket. Needless to say, efficiency and speed are paramount here.

Bak kut teh station with choose-your-own fixings

While you're waiting for your bamboo baskets to cook, you can stop by the bak kut teh station. Here you can point at whatever ingredients you'd like added to your bak kut teh, a dish that translates to meat bone tea.


Bak kut teh or meat bone tea 120 THB (about AU$5.30)

It's one of my favourite soups, sweet and strong with Chinese herbs and spices. Ours is packed with mushroom, bean curd skin and red dates.


Thai iced sock coffees 20 THB (about AU$0.85)

And as the humidity starts to hit, order a Thai coffee - brewed the traditional way with a stocking - cooled down with a little condensed milk and a lot of ice.


Dumplings, dim sum and bak kut teh for breakfast

It's not until our bamboo baskets arrive that it starts to dawn on us exactly how much we have ordered. Our individual orders combine to teetering skyscrapers. And our order keeps coming. We end up sharing our dishes between the four of us. It's crazy fun.


Pandan custard buns

And the highlight? These pandan custard buns. The custard is intensely fragrant with pandan. The bun is warm, soft and fluffy.

Stomachs lined, we head off to our next stop: Khao Lak




Go-Benz Phuket
163 Patiphat Road (corner of Krabi Road), Phuket Town, Phuket, Thailand
Tel: +66 (090) 702 2259

Open daily 7pm-2am 

Super Dimsum 
Sa Khu, Thalang District, Phuket 83110 Thailand
Tel: +66 (081) 326 3788

Open daily 5.30am-12pm

Grab Your Fork travelled independently to Phuket. All places in this post were visited anonymously and paid for personally.

> Read the next Thailand 2018 post on Khao Lak


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No. 1 BBQ House, Campsie

Want the best Chinese barbecue shop in Sydney? No 1 BBQ House in Campsie is the business, which is why you’ll find a queue of customers spilling out onto the footpath no matter what time of day. And while the shop does a roaring trade in takeaway – the Lunar New Year queues are legendary – eating in is much more fun.

Just five tables dot the interior, mostly filled with single diners smashing down a plate of glistening roast duck or caramelised barbecue pork with rice. You’ll pay more to dine in than takeaway but it still makes for a bargain meal, with no washing up.


Roast duck and roast pork with noodles $13

The menu is one A5 laminated sheet, but the best stuff is on the back – that’s the side starting with combination BBQ – a mixed meat platter of all the good stuff hanging in the front window. Pick what you want and then the man with the cleaver will chop it up with alarming speed and precision.


Roast pork with crackling

There are two dishes with no English translation. Intrigued? Ordering one will net you a platter of offal. The other scores you a soy sauce duck head. Both are a part of a Southern Chinese traditional dish known in Cantonese as lou mei, usually meat, offal or offcuts braised in an aromatic and slightly sweet soy-based master stock.


Lou mei offal platter with tendon, tripe, pigs ears and intestines

Go to town with duck tongues, pork liver or fatty pork intestines. Braised pigs ears are a wonder that deserve broader appreciation, contrasting a gelatinous outer layer against the gentle crunch of soft cartilage. And if you love tendon, you’ll be in heaven here. It's a never-ending pile of soft and sticky luxury.


Soy sauce cuttlefish $14.80 

Get the soy sauce cuttlefish too. The orange tint comes from an added food dye but it's the texture that wins on all fronts, somehow both tender and crunchy at the same time. It's a phenomenon the Cantonese call “song”.


Complimentary house soup

Free tea and complimentary house soup make this a perfect pit stop for a cheap and hearty feed. That's why it's number one.






No. 1 BBQ House
152 Beamish Street, Campsie, Sydney
Tel: +61 (02) 9718 6147

Opening hours
Daily 10am-8pm


This article first appeared in Time Out Sydney. Read this article online or read more of my Time Out Sydney reviews.

Shanghai Dumpling, Ashfield

The secret to a great dumpling? Don’t ever underestimate the dumpling skin. Most diners prioritise the filling but if the wrapper is wrong, you’ll know about it. Too thin and your dumpling will break apart. Too thick and you’ll notice its rubbery doughiness immediately. We reckon that’s why Shanghai Dumpling in Ashfield – with its gossamer thin dumpling skins – has such a loyal following. It might be separated from the main hub of dumpling houses along Liverpool Road, but at any given time you’re bound to find the modest dining room – just 24 seats – filled with dumpling enthusiasts.


Preserved duck egg and pork dumplings with chilli bean sauce

You won’t find xiao long bao soup dumplings here. Nor pan-fried buns. The focus here is the classic wonton dumpling, folded almost tortellini-style, but bigger. Stick with the standard pork and chive; chicken and cabbage; or tofu with mixed mushroom, or level up with their daily specials, available in limited quantities. These include preserved duck egg (century egg) with pork; prawn with bamboo shoots; salted duck egg with pork; and a springy fish cake with shredded ginger and shallots. They all come in serving sizes of five or ten so you can mix and match as you please.


Shredded ginger, shallot and fish dumplings $9 for 5 / $15.80 for 10

Get them plain, with chilli sauce, with noodle soup or pan-fried. The latter three options will cost a little extra. On a budget? Here’s a tip: You can raid the condiment trolley and make up your own dipping sauce of vinegar, chilli sauce, lemon and soy.


Preserved duck egg and pork dumplings $7.50 for 5 / $12.80 for 10

It’s worth savouring your first dumpling unadorned. That’ll give you a chance to appreciate the subtle flavour of the filling, and the slippery elegance of the dumpling skins. The silky tail ends are almost the best bit.


Noodle soup with hot spicy beef and beef tendon $12.80

If you’re still hungry, there are two pages of noodle options. Warm up with a cavernous bowl of soup filled with thin wheat noodles, chunks of spicy beef and gelatinous beef tendon.


Shredded chicken with chilli and Sichuan pepper $8.80 

Or attack a mountain of stir-fried noodles with shredded chicken and chilli. All the noodle toppings are also available as sides.

Wish you could eat dumplings every night? You can get takeaway packs of fresh or frozen dumplings to cook at home. Sorted.






Shanghai Dumpling
337 Liverpool Road, Ashfield, Sydney
Tel: +61 (02) 9797 6999

Opening hours
Wednesday to Sunday 11am-9pm


This article first appeared in Time Out Sydney. Read this article online or read more of my Time Out Sydney reviews.

Totti's, Bondi

Been missing Pinbone? Good news! While the Pinbone team is still on hiatus, you can now find Mike Eggert on the pans at Totti's. It's the newest venture by Merivale, a casual Italian eatery tucked into The Royal Bondi hotel. Expect lots of shareable dishes for large groups, tasty snacks for the peckish and some rocking great pastas.


Totti's menu and 1L of orange cordial $3 
No-groni seedlip spice, monin bitter and palermo rouge $15

The courtyard is definitely where you want to be, a breezy open space overlooked by the kitchen. It's here you can watch Eggert commanding the pass, with woodfire expert Khan Danis (ex-Rockpool) keeping a close watch over everything in the Josper charcoal oven.

Settle in with a cocktail or mocktail under the olive trees (craned in specifically for Totti's). They even have $3 jugs of orange cordial (weak, but hey $3!) with all proceeds going to OneWave, a non-profit community group that focuses on surfing for mental health .


Burrata, olives and salumi

The internal dining room is where you'll find all the salumi and the wood-fired oven. It's a cosy space but the room can be prone to stuffiness depending on how hot it is outside. Large ceiling fans do help with airflow.


Prepping burrata behind vine tomatoes 

But there's plenty to watch here, as staff shave salumi, scoop out plump balls of burrata from urns, and drizzle everything with grassy green extra virgin olive oil.


Wood-fired bread fresh out of the oven

You also get to spy on all the wood-fired oven action, watching the dough being teased into shape before a smoky interlude in the oven.


Wood-fired bread $10 each

The wood-fired bread puffs up into blistered pillows, like a fluffy space ship that's flown too close to the sun.


Burrata $8 

You'll definitely want to order a round of wood-fired bread, ripping apart its piping hot crust to sop up the spillage of cream from the gleaming pouch of burrata. The stuffed mozzarella is milky sweet, splashed liberally with extra virgin olive oil.


'Nduja $8 

A couple of antipasto favourites have made the leap from Pinbone's former pop-up, Dirty Italian Disco. That includes the burrata, chicken liver parfait and the 'nduja. The latter isn't half as spicy as its former incarnation - a good or bad thing depending on where you sit on the Scoville scale - but it's still a ridiculously addictive porky paste.


Pastas at Totti's 

Whatever you do, make sure you order a plate of pasta. Eggert's commitment to handmade pastas is a joy to behold.


Lamb ragu with pappardelle $29 

Pappardelle with lamb ragu sounds more like a winter dish but there's a lightness to the passata sauce, mixed thoroughly through lazy folds of wide and silky pappardelle. The lamb is soft and tender.


Fregola with calamari and mussels $29

Calamari, mussels and fresh parsley brighten a bowl of gently chewy fregola. The seafood is cooked just so.


Linguine with spinach, herbs and walnut pangrattato $25 

I'd been keen to order the spinach linguine and it comes up the goods. There's much to like about the tangle of al dente linguine, tossed through with pesto and covered in mixed green herbs, parmesan and walnut pangrattato. The crunch of the fried bread (pangrattato) is oh so good.


Rigatoni with milk-braised pork and chilli $28 

Short tubes of rigatoni pasta are the ideal vessel for holding a rubble of milk-braised pork and a good shower of parmesan. It's a simple celebration of pasta with meat and cheese, anointed generously with olive oil.


Prawn casarecce $29 

My favourite, though, is the prawn casarecce, the hand-rolled pasta providing a chewy contrast to the plump curls of prawn. There's an intensity of prawn flavour to the sauce, as though it has been made with prawn head stock. It's enough to make you stop for air with the first mouthful, before you greedily grab another forkful and plough on.


Bannockburn roast chicken $39 

Admittedly the Bannockburn roast chicken isn't as good as the spatchcock with lemon and tarragon butter at Dirty Italian Disco, but there's a fine wood-fired char to the skin. The flesh is a little dry though, although somewhat rectified with a good squeeze of fresh lemon.


800g wood-grilled rib eye steak $89

We have much more fun attacking the wood-grilled rib eye steak. It's a beast of a cut at 800g, cooked so the flesh has a caramelised crust. I scored the bone, and gnawed off every last skerrick of fat and flesh.


Baked eggplant, chilli and pangrattato $11

There's a wide selection of vegetarian sides, mostly likely numbering eight if you remove a few rogue meat ingredients. The baked eggplant is the kind of dish you almost want to order with bread, so you can scoop out and savour the soft and sticky flesh.


Zucchini, mint and parmesan salad $9

And while the zucchini, mint and parmesan salad looks a little too simple at first, there's a surprise puddle of what tastes like ricotta cheese at the bottom. It lends a pleasing creaminess to the super fresh raw zucchini rounds covered in a blanket of finely grated parmesan cheese.


Roasted Roma beans, pancetta and red pepper dressing $11

Roasted Roman beans are amped up with a red capsicum sauce spiked with pancetta. There's a delicious sweetness to the beans although some pods are noticeably more fibrous than others.


Char-grilled broccolini, almond and anchovy $11

And I can't get enough of the char-grilled broccolini, heavily scented with smoke and scattered through with roasted almond chunks and bits of anchovy.


Broccolini in the Josper charcoal oven

The broccolini gets its smokiness from the glowing coals in the Josper oven.


300g veal rump schnitzel $29

Our group of nine is still peckish so we order another round of pastas (the pork rigatoni and the prawn casarecce) as well as the veal rump schnitzel.


Inside the veal schnitzel

There's a small issue with the batter tasting a little undercooked and gluey - an issue that could have been avoided with another 30 seconds in the deep-fryer - but the veal itself is soft and juicy. It's a shame, especially as we savour the perfectly salty crunch of fried capers and wispy curls of parmesan cheese.


Ice cream sandwich $8

Dessert-wise, we order everything on the menu except for the cheese platter. For maximum fun, get the ice cream sandwich, a nostalgic throwback to childhood. What impresses here is how the ice cream sandwich, when done well, can be so good. That means a proper strawberry ice cream - a little bit sweet, a little bit tangy - sandwiched alongside vanilla and chocolate ice cream between fresh and crunchy wafer sheets.


Orange flan $12

On a hot summer's day, you'll want the orange flan, its soft set custard covered in a rubble of orange granita.


Cherry and stone fruit crostata (tart of the day) $12

The tart of the day is a cherry and stone fruit crostata when we dine. It's a fine tasting tart, with buttery pastry holding big pockets of sweet and sticky fruit. A big dollop of cream on the side makes it all go down a treat.


Tiramisu $12

And you bet we ordered the tiramisu. A purist would insist the sponge fingers should have been soaked to be a little softer in texture, but there's still much to like here, from the soft clouds of whipped cream to the sweet debris of chocolate across the top.



Judging by the business of the dining room, the crowds have already found Totti's and they don't look to be leaving soon. Grab your mates and kick back in the courtyard either before or after a trip to the beach.






Totti's at The Royal Bondi
283 Bondi Road, Bondi, Sydney
Tel: +61 (02) 9114 7371

Opening hours
Monday to Saturday 11.30am-12am
Sunday 11.30am-10pm


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