Correction (1 October 2026): an earlier version of this page said its writer had eaten at every Thai restaurant in the CBD and listed five places, with opening hours, seat counts, owners and prices, that we cannot find in the Australian Good Food Guide’s Melbourne City Thai listing or among OpenStreetMap’s Thai restaurants in the CBD. That eating did not happen and those details could not be stood behind. The page has been rewritten from scratch: every place below was checked against its own website or ordering menu, its address was confirmed at a second, independent source, and every price was copied from the venue’s own menu on 1 October 2026.
A Thai menu reads faster once a few words are decoded. Tum (or som tum) is a pounded papaya salad. Larb and nahm tok are herb-and-lime meat salads thickened with toasted ground rice. Krapow means holy basil, so pad krapow is a basil stir-fry, usually over rice. Khao soi is the coconut curry noodle soup of northern Thailand, with crisp noodles on top. Boat noodles are small, dark, spiced beef or pork noodle soups, named for the canal boats they were once sold from.
The CBD has all of them, often on the same menu. This guide covers five kitchens inside the grid: two on Bourke Street, one on Little Bourke Street, one in Heffernan Lane and one under Little Collins Street. Each section decodes the menu, names a region only where the venue’s own menu names one, and picks a first order with its listed price.
The quick picks
| If you’re after | Head to | Order this first | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| A cheap noodle lunch | Soi 38 | Boat noodles with beef | $12 |
| A share-everything dinner | Longrain | Banquet menu (per person) | $95 |
| Khao soi in a laneway | Boonchoou | Khao soi with chicken | $20 (lunch menu) |
| A lunch noodle list (12pm to 4pm) | Thailand on Bourke | Pad Thai Goong | $17.90 |
| Tom yum noodles | Dodee Paidang | Tom yum noodle | Not online |
Soi 38 — 235 Bourke St, Melbourne VIC 3000
If you searched for “the Thai place in the car park”, this is it, and it has moved. Broadsheet reports that Soi 38 left its ground-floor car park at the end of 2024 and relocated to 235 Bourke Street, where a full kitchen let it add stir-fries such as pad krapow. Soi 38’s own site prints its address as 38 Royal Lane and pins its map at 235 Bourke Street; Broadsheet’s listing and OpenStreetMap also give 38 Royal Lane. Soi 38’s own site says it serves noodle dishes at lunch and Thai street food at dinner, and that the night menu is Issan street food.
Region: Issan (north-eastern Thailand), in Soi 38’s own words. Decoder: boat noodles are a small, intense spiced soup; Soi 38’s own guide says to season the bowl yourself with fish sauce, sugar, dried chilli and chilli vinegar. Menu says: boat noodles with beef $12, tum Thai (papaya salad with dried shrimp and peanuts) $17, pad krapow minced pork $18, khao soi chicken $18. How to order: the site lists lunch from 11am to 3pm and dinner from 5pm every day.
Order this first: boat noodles with beef, $12, the dish Soi 38 says it started with.
Longrain — 44 Little Bourke St, Melbourne VIC 3000
Longrain is the Scott Pickett Group’s modern Thai restaurant, and its menu is built for sharing. The banquet is $95 per person: a Pacific oyster, a betel leaf with scallop, crispy rice salad, a beef brisket skewer, caramelised pork hock, a slow-cooked lamb yellow curry, greens, rice and dessert. Its site says groups of eight or more eat the banquet. Ordering a la carte instead, a betel leaf with scallop and red chilli nahm jim is $13 each, som tum with snake beans and shrimp floss is $22, and gai golae, a southern-style grilled coconut chicken, is $48 for a half or $80 for a whole bird.
Decoder: a betel leaf is used as a wrapper; pick it up with your fingers and eat it in one bite. How to order: dinner runs from 5.30pm Monday to Thursday and 5pm Friday to Sunday, with lunch on Fridays only, per the restaurant’s site.
Order this first: the $95 banquet, because the a la carte list is long and the banquet covers most of its sections.
Boonchoou — 11 Heffernan Ln, Melbourne VIC 3000
A Thai restaurant over two floors of a laneway building, with the Joop Joop bar on the floor between. Boonchoou says it serves “dishes from the four regions of Thailand using local Australian ingredients”, and its lunch menu runs long: entrees, grilled skewers, papaya salads, soups and curries, stir-fries, fried rice and noodles.
Region: the menu calls its khao soi a “Northern thai coconut curry” and its geang pu a “southern spicy” yellow curry. Lunch menu says: khao soi with chicken $20, pork boat noodle soup $19, geang pu (yellow curry with crab meat and betel leaves, marked extra hot on the menu) $38, and mango sticky rice $15. Decoder: khao soi is egg noodles in a coconut curry broth; the crisp fried noodles on top are part of the dish.
Order this first: khao soi, $20 at lunch, the clearest way into a menu that names its regions.
Thailand on Bourke — Shop 11, 108 Bourke St, Melbourne VIC 3000
A street-level restaurant on Bourke Street with its full menu on its own ordering site. The section to know is the lunch noodle list, served from 12pm to 4pm only: Pad Thai Goong (rice noodles with prawns, egg and tamarind) is $17.90, boat noodle soup with pork is $16.90, and Kao Soi, listed as a “Chiang Mai Style Curry” with egg noodles and chicken or beef, is $17.90.
Region: Chiang Mai, for the Kao Soi, as the menu states. Menu says: Goong Obb Woonsane, king prawns roasted with glass noodles, bacon and ginger, $31.90, from the chef’s recommended list. How to order: the noodle list is lunch only, so after 4pm go to the curry, soup and stir-fry sections.
Order this first: Pad Thai Goong, $17.90, because tamarind is what separates a pad thai from a plain fried noodle.
Dodee Paidang — Basement, 353 Little Collins St, Melbourne VIC 3000
Dodee Paidang says it started with the tom yum noodle, bringing it “all the way from Thailand to Sydney” before setting its sights on Melbourne. Its own site lists two CBD branches: this basement on Little Collins Street and a ground-floor shop at 245 Swanston Street.
Decoder: tom yum is the hot-and-sour soup built on lemongrass, galangal, makrut lime leaf and chilli; as a noodle soup it comes with rice noodles in the broth. Menu says: no prices we could read. Its online ordering menu showed section names but no items or prices when we checked, outside ordering hours, so check there before you go.
Order this first: the tom yum noodle the restaurant says it started with; check the ordering menu for today’s version and price.
Quick answers
Is Soi 38 still in the car park?
No. Broadsheet reports that Soi 38 left the ground-floor car park at the end of 2024 and relocated to 235 Bourke Street. Soi 38’s own site prints its address as 38 Royal Lane and pins its map at 235 Bourke Street; Broadsheet’s listing and OpenStreetMap also give 38 Royal Lane.
Where can I get Thai food on Bourke Street?
Two places on this list are on Bourke Street: Soi 38 at 235 Bourke Street (boat noodles with beef $12) and Thailand on Bourke at Shop 11, 108 Bourke Street (Pad Thai Goong $17.90 at lunch).
Where can I get a cheap Thai lunch in the CBD?
Soi 38 lists boat noodles with beef at $12 and is open for lunch from 11am to 3pm daily. Thailand on Bourke runs a lunch noodle list from 12pm to 4pm, with boat noodle soup with pork at $16.90. Boonchoou’s lunch menu lists pork boat noodle soup at $19.
Where can I get khao soi in Melbourne CBD?
Three places on this list have it: Thailand on Bourke (Kao Soi, $17.90, lunch noodle list), Soi 38 (khao soi chicken, $18) and Boonchoou (khao soi with chicken, $20 on its lunch menu).
What are Thai boat noodles?
Small bowls of rice noodles in a dark, spiced beef or pork broth, named for the canal boats they were once sold from in Bangkok. Soi 38 tells diners to season them at the table with fish sauce, sugar, dried chilli and chillies in vinegar. Soi 38, Boonchoou and Thailand on Bourke all list them.
How we checked
On 1 October 2026 we read each restaurant’s own website or online ordering menu and copied every item and price exactly as printed. Soi 38’s prices come from its own online shop pages and Thailand on Bourke’s from the ordering menu on its own website. Longrain’s food page prints prices without a dollar sign, so “// 22” became $22. We confirmed each address at a second, independent source: the Australian Good Food Guide, Broadsheet or OpenStreetMap. Where the sources disagreed (the Good Food Guide still lists Soi 38 at its old McIlwraith Place address) we used the venue’s own site and Broadsheet’s report of the move. Online prices can differ from counter prices, and menus change. The photos are illustrative, from Unsplash: they show the kind of dish, not the restaurants’ own food.
Seen something out of date? Email [email protected] with the page link and what has changed, and we will check it again.
Sources
- Soi 38: soi38.com (address, hours), about, product pages for boat noodles with beef, tum Thai, pad krapow minced pork and khao soi chicken; move reported by Broadsheet
- Longrain: longrainmelbourne.com and its food menu; address also at AGFG and Broadsheet
- Boonchoou: boonchoou.com, its lunch menu and about page; address also at AGFG
- Thailand on Bourke: thailandonbourke.com (ordering menu); address also at AGFG
- Dodee Paidang: dodeepaidang.com; address also at AGFG and OpenStreetMap
