Coming Soon: A New Cocktail Bar From the Boon Choou Team Combines Thai and Aussie Influences

Boon Choou opened this year and quickly stood out in the CBD’s competitive Thai restaurant scene. The laneway venue is from Chalermpol Tancharoensap, Tanapat Limpaiboonwattana and Poowadon “Sam” Pothiprasert, who have a combined 35 years of experience at Palisa Anderson’s Sydney institution Chat Thai. The trio has brought the breadth of Thailand’s regional cuisines together under one roof – with a few family recipes you can’t find anywhere else.

Now, the team is preparing to open Joop Joop (Thai for “kiss kiss”), a cocktail bar on Boon Choou’s second floor. “Our concept is to play with mixing local ingredients and Thai ingredients,” Pothiprasert says. This ethos applies as much to the drinks as it does the food.

Signature cocktails will include Sun Kiss – a lightly carbonated drink made with local mango cordial infused with lemon myrtle and makrut lime. Another, Burn Baby Burn, is a mix of whisky and corn-butter-fat-washed rum with toasted corn and caramelised coconut sugar. 

There’ll be around 15 small plates on the menu, and each signature drink will have a corresponding dish designed to complement its flavour profile.

Bites will include seasonal fruit topped with Yarra Valley salmon roe and flossed (dried and shredded) local trout. It’s “a reimagined Thai summer snack [that’s] bright, savoury and a little wild.” There’ll also be sakoo sai moo, pork and sago dumplings made from sago the team imports from Thailand – “[The] sago you can find in Melbourne, it’s not the real sago,” says Pothiprasert – and filled with pork, salted coconut and Australian macadamia nuts in place of the typical peanuts. 

Joop Joop will open later this year with room for around 50 people and a different look and feel to the downstairs restaurant. “[It will be] warmer, more fun and a bit cheeky,” says Pothiprasert.

 Joop Joop is expected to open at 11 Heffernan Lane, Melbourne before the end of the year.