I Can’t Stop Thinking About: Long Chim’s Dark and Smoky Khao Soi

In 2014, I spent three months living in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. I rented a pink bicycle and became obsessed with khao soi.

Not the casual kind of obsession. The sort that has you pedalling across the city in 38-degree heat because somebody’s cousin swears a woman down an alleyway near Wat Lok Moli makes a better version than the famous place you’ve just eaten at. I sought out khao soi from restaurants, market stalls and roadside shacks. If there was a bowl of it within cycling distance, I ate it.

Khao soi is often described as a noodle soup, which is technically true in the same way that a banh mi is technically a sandwich. At its best, it’s one of the great one-bowl meals of the world: springy wheat noodles swimming in a fragrant coconut curry, topped with a nest of crisp fried noodles and served alongside pickled mustard greens, raw shallots, lime and chilli. Every bowl is a balancing act between richness, spice, acidity and texture.

After eating dozens of versions across northern Thailand, I thought I had a reasonably fixed idea of what khao soi should look like. Then I ordered the beef khao soi at Long Chim.

The first surprise is the colour. Instead of the orange-tinged, coconut-rich broth commonly seen around Chiang Mai, Long Chim’s arrives dark and glossy, the surface shimmering with chilli oil and spice.

Head chef Welly Yuan says much of that depth comes from the restaurant’s generous use of black cardamom. “Black cardamom is quite smoky and quite deep in flavour,” he says. Cinnamon is toasted until it darkens, while Thai bay leaves contribute another layer of aromatic complexity.

Then there’s the beef. Brisket is marinated in dark soy sauce before being deep-fried until it’s deeply caramelised and fall-apart tender. It finishes cooking in coconut milk, lending the broth a savoury richness that pushes the dish more into stew territory.

The result is a khao soi that feels less bright and playful than many Chiang Mai versions, but more layered and contemplative. Every spoonful reveals something different: smoke, sweetness, warming spice, the gentle bitterness of toasted aromatics. The fried noodles soften as they sit, becoming part garnish, part ingredient.

Perhaps what I love most is that it doesn’t try to replicate the “traditional” northern Thai khao soi. Khao soi itself is a dish shaped by migration, trade routes and cultural overlap. Its history is tangled somewhere between northern Thailand, Burma and the Muslim Chinese communities that travelled through the region. Reinvention is part of its DNA.

I’ve eaten many bowls of khao soi since parking that pink bicycle for the last time. Some have been more traditional. A few have been better in individual respects. Yet I keep finding myself back at Long Chim, chasing another bowl of that dark, smoky broth.

Obsessions, it turns out, are difficult to shake.

Khao soi is available during June and July as part of its Wednesday winter curry night.

@longchim_perth