Join Yum Club – Ama’s new restaurant serves Thai food unlike anywhere in Sydney

Prepare to join Yum Club – a new Surry Hills restaurant capturing the bold colours, flavours and fun of the Isan region, near Laos in north-eastern Thailand.

“Isan food is all about fun. You’ll feel it as soon as you come in – the music, the vibe, the distinct smell of the herbs and spices,” said Rowena Chansiri, who co-founded Yum Club with Alisa “Nana” Luangpaseuth and Rujirada “Mild” Wongswadiwat.

Yum Club will open on Monday, October 12. It’s Chansiri’s third venture, following the success of Ickle, her specialty coffee roastery and cafe in Kingsgrove, and Ama, a casual Thai-Chinese restaurant in Surry Hills, awarded the Good Food Guide Critics’ Pick of the Year in 2025.

The Yum Club concept was born out of post-shift hangs at Wongswadiwat’s home, where the three women gathered over a charcoal barbecue to grill Isan-style dishes. They met while working at Ickle, when Chansiri was head roaster and Luangpaseuth and Wongswadiwat were baristas, and connected over their love of Isan cuisine.

While there are several Sydney restaurants with Isan dishes on the menu (such as Nua Lao Thai Kitchen in Haymarket and Kim Yum at World Square) Chansiri is confident that Yum Club is only restaurant in the city serving only Isan food. That means you won’t find some of Thailand’s most popular dishes, including pad Thai and pineapple rice.

Instead, there’ll be lots of small share plates, with dishes like crispy corn fritters with sweet chilli sauce, skewers of saucy marinated scallops, and char-grilled pork neck with a side of garlicky rice – perfect for warm evenings in the outdoor courtyard, with an ice bucket of Singha or Chang beers.

“For Thai people, Isan food is the go-to for social catch-ups,” Chansiri said. “It’s not fancy, it’s very approachable, a bit like tapas.”

The cuisine was born out of necessity, she explained: small freshwater fish caught from local canals, fermented and made into sauces; sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves for easy portability; and the ready availability of fresh produce, such as green papaya and chilli. “It’s very summery food,” said Chansiri. Only proteins are grilled.

Yum Club divides the menu into six main categories of Isan cuisine: fried, grilled, skewered, soupy, som tum (aromatic salads) and yum (dishes tossed with fresh chilli and sour-savoury dressing). Head chef Min Poohmin, who moves over from Ama, adapted many of the recipes from Wongswadiwat’s Laotian mother Muay Nattapon.

“Isan food is very similar to Laos food, just twisted with Thai taste and ingredients,” said Chansiri, who recommends ordering at least one dish from four categories for the full experience. The pork larb, Laos sausage skewers, tum mua (green papaya and Vietnamese pork with pickled vegetables and crackling) and om (a fragrant chicken or beef stew) are a good place to start.

Most seating is outdoors, in a shady courtyard out the back, but there’s capacity for 10 inside and a few more on the footpath.