Sofia Levin reviews: Bai Mai Bai Ya — ‘fills a huge gap in the market’
In a sentence: Pre-prepared plant-based Thai meals from one of Melbourne’s most authentic Thai restaurants
The damage: meals are $13.80, the Chef’s Box is $40, local delivery $10
Top tip: these meals might be plant-based, but they’re not just for vegans!
If you like this: check out more suggestions for interesting Melbourne-wide delivery on Seasoned Traveller.
Today I’m reviewing Bai Mai Bai Ya, a plant-based Thai delivery concept. But this is not so much a review as it is a story of resilience.
Bai Mai Bai Ya (which means leaves and grasses) comes from the team behind Thai Tide, one of my favourite Thai restaurants that never quite reopened after the most recent Melbourne lockdowns. They did an incredible job staying afloat with their seafood delivery concept, Talay Thai (the mud crab set was one of the best things I ate in lockdown), but that’s on pause until the staffing crisis eases.
More recently they launched Bai Mai Bai Ya, which fills a huge gap in the market. It delivers wholesome, spicy and aromatic pre-prepared Thai meals across Melbourne – and they just happen to be vegan.
Order a couple of days in advance for delivery between Thursday and Sunday, or if you can’t wait, there’s next-day delivery via iPantry (which also offers meals from restaurants such as 400 Gradi, Coda and Tonka, Botanical Hotel, Burn City Smokers and Ladyboy Dining). The meals arrive in recyclable containers with cardboard information slips, similar to Soulara or Light n’ Easy, but far tastier.
I’d organise delivery for Sunday, which is the only day you can order the special $40 Chef’s Box. I don’t think I’ve ever seen food quite this colourful. A shallow cardboard box lined with banana leaves is centred by bright blue rice, which is naturally dyed using butterfly pea flowers. It forms the nucleus of khao yum, a rainbow rice salad surrounded by tofu, caramelised tempeh, julienned apple and carrot, red cabbage, mung beans, chopped green beans, cucumber, red grapefruit, crunchy coconut shreds and dried chilli. The idea is to heat the rice, mix through the ingredients and then drizzle with budu dressing (a vegan alternative of the usual fermented anchovy sauce).
The butterfly pea flowers also add a blue tint to the vermicelli noodles in the rice paper rolls, which are swaddled with a cluster of small oyster mushrooms, tofu, vegetables and are served with wasabi tofu sauce and Thai lime chilli dressing. There’s also mar hor, pineapple bites topped with a thick paste of roasted cashews, kaffir lime, coriander and palm sugar; fried taro and black bean cake with chilli tamarind sauce; Thai-Chinese dessert soup best poured over crushed ice that contains longan, red dates, lotus root and peach jelly; and a freshly brewed, sweet lemongrass tea with chia seeds.
That’s just the Chef’s Box. The pre-prepared meals range from the most realistic “fishless Thai fishcakes” loaded with kaffir lime to spicy larb made with banana blossom instead of the usual pork or chicken. To start, mixed mushroom tom yum doesn’t hold back on spice or flavour, or there are pan-fried gyoza stuffed with sweet corn, peas, mushroom and onion.
My pick is the lotus rice, studded with shitake mushrooms, red beans, corn, barley and big yellow ginko seeds. It comes wrapped in lotus leaves and pre-baked, ready for reheating.
Onto the coconut-based curries, each served with purple wholegrain rice. The red curry is made with mock duck breast, lychee pulp and pineapple. In massaman curry plant protein replaces beef alongside the regular carrots, potatoes and fragrant addition of cinnamon and star anise. Mock chicken breast features in the green curry with pumpkin, eggplant and Thai basil.
The woman behind Bai Mai Bai Ya and Thai Tide, Merica, is a pretty special person. She held off flying her family home to be with loved ones in Thailand during peak lockdown to keep her dwindling businesses open, which in turn kept a roof over the heads of her staff on temporary visas who didn’t receive government support. She somehow managed this while home-schooling two children and supporting the family while her pilot husband was out of work when Thai Airways was grounded.
Unfortunately the staffing crises has meant that delivery is limited to Bai Mai Bai Ya for now and the restaurant is closed, but I hope to see Thai Tide and its associated businesses revived soon.
Bai Mai Bai Ya
Online only
bmby.com.au