Truly Scrumptious

Fireback, residency at Crown Perth

Fireback is at Perth Crown for a limited time, it’s an authentic Thai restaurant from EHV International. Fireback is curated by David Thompson, the well known Australian chef who lives and breathes Thai food, and runs the well established spicy set-up – Long Chim – at Perth’s State Buildings, previously having held a Michelin star with London’s Nahm. The residency is in the space that used to be occupied by Bistro Guillaume.

We were directed to our seats and given the menus. We chose a mocktail from the menu – Tropic Crush – containing mango puree, pineapple, lychee, and ginger beer, and topped with a nice large lychee – very refreshing.

The menu was full of delicious options and I really wanted all of them, so it was hard to choose. We asked the waiter how many dishes to select and he suggested two small and one large to share, but we actually chose three small and one large. I forgot to ask to have the dishes staggered, which was a shame because they all arrived together. This seems to be a theme lately with restaurants, there’s no starters any more, your food just comes up as and when it’s ready. I much prefer a dish or two at a time, then you can linger over each dish separately rather than being assaulted with too many flavours all at once.

The first dish to arrive was Miang Kham – a one-bite pomelo salad with jaggery, peanuts, chilli, galangal, and toasted coconut, served on a betel leaf. I have had a similar dish before and it was amazing. This didn’t disappoint – you wrap the betel leaf around the contents and just pop it in your mouth and it’s an explosion of everything good about Thai food. The only problem was that the serving size is 3, and you can’t really chop one in half. It would be nice if there was an option to have an extra portion so that the dish divided more easily. Anyhow, it was heavenly – a great start.

Next up was the Moo Grob, a dish suggested by our waiter – crispy pork belly served with charred cabbage and a rich chilli jam. Again a superb dish, really tasty pork, great chilli jam, and the cabbage – wow. How good can cabbage taste? Well try this dish because the cabbage had an incredibly fresh flavour with a lovely char on it.

Then came WA king prawns, served with a lime and chilli dipping sauce. The sauce was amazing and the prawns good quality, but again – three prawns between two of us, and at $29 that worked out at almost $10 a prawn. For that price I would have liked plumper prawns, or more of them, but they were very nice nonetheless.

Our large plate was the red curry with soft shell crab, served with jasmine rice. The sauce was rich and thick, quite heavy on the shrimp paste and a very bold flavour. I loved it and was glad that I ate this last because the taste stayed with me for quite a while.

We decided to finish off by sharing a mango sticky rice, always a good measure of a Thai restaurant. It was nice, perfectly ripe mango, but the coconut cream was cold. Traditionally the cream is heated up and salted, but ours was really cold, so this step had been missed. It was still a good dish.

So what did we think? Overall the food quality was very good and we enjoyed the meal, even though it was on the expensive side. The service was a bit lacking though. Our waiter was very nice, but the staff in general did not provide the attention that you usually get when you are paying top prices. Other tables were served ahead of us even though they arrived later. We seemed to wait a long time for our drinks, nobody topped up the table water, we had to ask, and nobody wiped down the table (which was fairly messy) between mains and dessert. It would have been good to be offered an extra portion of the dishes served in threes, and I would have liked the waiters to ask us which pace of food delivery we preferred i.e. all at once or slow and more sequential. I also noted that Crown now charge an extra 10% on a Sunday, whether it’s a public holiday weekend or not. I really object to that and assume that it is Crown-wide. It will definitely make me think twice about booking meals on Sundays. So – great food, lacklustre service, and quite expensive.

Last visit date – April 2026

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