David Thompson's Long Chim fires up in Melbourne

• Review: Long Chim Sydney
• David Thompson's five must-try Thai street food dishes

When Sydney chef David Thompson first holidayed in Thailand in the 1980s, it wasn't love at first bite. But gradually, he fell for the cuisine's hot, sour, salty, sweet complexity.

Yet he sometimes wonders why he didn't just fly to Italy, "where all I'd have to worry about is olive oil and an artichoke".

Since making his name with Sydney's Darley Street Thai in the 1990s, he's spent the past 15 years opening Thai restaurants from London to Bangkok, Singapore to Perth.

Now it's Melbourne's turn to cop a blast of chilli heat, with the opening of Long Chim (Thai for "come and taste") beside the Yarra River at Crown at the former No.8 by John Lawson site.

The 160-seater is Thompson's third Long Chim restaurant in Australia (there are branches in Perth and Sydney), where the focus is on street food, a hybridised style that combines Thai flavours and the cuisines of Chinese and other immigrants. Some of the dishes are "bracing" but many rely less on chilli heat than pure Thai dishes, says Thompson.

If you try one thing at Long Chim, make it a bowl of noodles, Thompson advises. There are half a dozen wokked noodle dishes on the opening menu but in February, when Long Chim starts serving lunch, the kitchen will send out noodle soups.

Other must-try dishes, he says, are the curries and stir-fries, including soft-shell crab with chilli, black pepper and coriander.

To quench the fire there's a cocktail list that taps ingredients such as coconut, ginger, Thai basil and coriander, along with beers and aromatic wines.

Thompson will spend much of the next three months in the Southbank kitchen, training the team to cook at pace and taste as they go. "It must be bold in taste, full flavoured yet rounded. If you don't get that right, there's a tangible lackingness."

Then it's home to Bangkok, where his flagship restaurant Nahm awaits. "I've been away too long for my liking."

​Open daily 5pm–late. Lunch bookings from early February.

Crown Melbourne Riverwalk, 8 Whiteman Street, Southbank, 03 8582 3082, crownmelbourne.com