Iima, Haymarket

Located inside Mr.B's Hotel on Pitt Street where Mandarin Club used to stand is Iima, a Thai Japanese  restaurant that is run by the same people that is responsible for the famous Chat Thai restaurants. 

When I first came here as it was just opened, I was expecting to see fusion dishes, but instead there are 2 separate cuisines here, Japanese and Thai.

It does solve the problem when some feels like Thai and the others feels like Japanese :P

Come to Iima and you can have both in the one place, genius !

Tonight we decided to get 2 Japanese and 2 Thai dishes to share between the 3 of us. 

Ocean Trout Wrap

What they called a wrap is really just a sushi roll, there's lightly seared ocean trout, avocado, topped with spicy leek and then served with miso mayonnaise on the side.

My friends commented that the sauce looked like a centipede, I'm afraid I must agree LOL

So we quickly scramble the sauce so it doesn't look like one anymore :P

Compared to when I had this dish last (back in Nov'09), I must say that the portion size has gone up. Which is great because they have kept up the quality, the ocean trout is fresh and love the smoky flavour from the searing action. 

Tori Nanban

Succulent chicken breast pieces tempura served with a caramelized soy vinegar dressing and topped with tartare sauce. It is quite similar to tori karaage but the batter is lighter and quite bland in flavour. But fret not, that's why the sauces are there to compliments the tempura chicken. The tangy soy vinegar dressing plus the creamy tartare sauce, yummm.....

Plain Rice ;  East meets West Cutleries

It's quite interesting eating with 2 sets of cutleries the chopsticks and the fork and spoon. I had to switch cutleries between dishes because picking up sushi rolls with anything other than chopsticks is just too hard.

Nahm Dtok Ocean Trout

When I ordered the 2 Thai dishes, the waitress express her concern that both of them are quite spicy. 

I asked, "How spicy?", her response was "Not too spicy, just a little".

We can handle little spicy, so we just stick to our selection.

NOTE : When they say "little" spicy it actually means "OMG !! Where is the gallon of water !!" kind of spicy.

It was freaking hot !! >_<; Mind you, we were brought up eating spicy foods, and we are struggling to eat it. 

Your mouth is burning and you sweat like crazy - in the middle of winter, not normal.

You should see us as we were eating it, it was continuous actions of eating, wipe sweat off forehead and hand on glass of water ROFL

It was hilarious !!! 

Although it was painful, we cannot stop eating it as it was very good ! The ocean trout is cubed and fried till crispy, then tossed lightly in lime juice, red onions, pounded roasted rice & roasted chili flakes (real potent chili flakes). It was then topped with some aromatic herbs which makes the dish even better.

If you like very spicy food , then this is the dish to order. 

Duck Curry

Thank goodness for the sweet duck curry , it really does help to calm down the heat from the previous dish *phew*

The juicy barbequed duck fillets are cooked in a mild sweet & sour curry, with pineapple, lychee baby corn & snow peas. The addition of fruits in it helps lift up the otherwise quite heavy curry.

Dessert Menu

Can't go pass the dessert menu :) Especially when it's pancakes heheehehe....

So here is how it works, you choose plain or pandan pancakes, choose what sort of topping you'd like (anything from standard strawberries to something more exotic like black sesame paste) and then choose what flavour ice cream to go with it.

Pancakes with Pandan Coconut Sauce

The pancakes size has almost doubled since last visit ! It used to be quite small and thin, so I told my friends we should go for the 4 pancakes option.

Ooops :P The pancakes are now larger in diameter and more fluffy, so of course we are struggling to finish off the dessert.

We got mixed pancakes, plain and pandan. The pandan ones are definitely the better of the two :) 

The pandan coconut sauce is creamy and sweet , the coconut ice cream is really good as well.

So if you are after some delicious Thai food and the queue at Chat Thai is looking like a line to a rock concert, walk a block to Iima and you will be as satisfied.

It is however located inside a bar, so I'm not quite sure if you need to be over 18 yo to dine here ?