Raya’s Thai Thali

The roads are dark, a storm rages, and Brad and Janet are caught out by a flat tyre on their road trip to Dr Frank-N-Furter’s castle. However! “In the velvet darkness of the blackest night, burning bright: there’s a guiding star…” 

Okay, so Mike and I are more Magenta and Riff Raff than Brad and Janet and the light at the end of the route from Bear Flat to Combe Down that we’re searching for is a pop-up kitchen, not the gothic mansion home of a flamboyant Transylvanian, erm, scientist. 

But then: crash, bang, wallop — we’ve bounced over a drop kerb! Now we’re flirting with the possibility of our own flat tyre to deal with, might we actually be caught up in the real life version of our own late night, double-feature picture show? 

No. The tyre is fine, it’s not raining hard enough to warrant creating makeshift umbrellas out of newspapers and, in a sparkly little hut at the end of a cute little lane off one of Combe Down’s major thoroughfares, we finally reach foodie nirvana: chef Will Gillbard’s innovative pop-up Thai dining experience Raya’s Thai Thali.

One-night-only foodie events are currently more talked about in and around Bath than individual restaurants are. Collaborations between hosts and pop-up chefs from grab’n’go to full-on foodie support existing cafes, pubs and venues without the commitment of employing permanent chefs and adding to increasingly demanding overheads, while hob god maestros get to flaunt their fabulous thing at grass roots level — and Raya’s Thai Thali has a cult following at the spearhead of the revolution: food from a hob god maestro in grab’n’go format.

RTT regularly pops up in all manner of locations from suburban neighbourhood locations such as the Ex-Servicemen’s Social Club in Weston Village, Bathampton Methodist Church and Bathford Royal British Legion Club to established pop-up hosts including Picnic in the Park and the Village Cafe and Bar in Larkhall by way of pubs (the Fox and Badger in Wellow; The Scrandit in Bristol) and a regular stall at Green Park Station Market.

We popped out to pick up our RTT goodie bag from Combe Down Rugby Club where Will and his woks pop up every second Friday of the month. All is calm, all is bright at journey’s end: the moment we open our car door we’re met with a waft of intrinsically Thai aromas and there’s smiley Will himself at the epicentre of his calm foodie storm, stirring and frying and generally working his magic. 

Our pre-order is waiting for us (and please note, pre-ordering is pretty much essential; on the evening we visited, RTT’s recently-unveiled new menu was already sold out) and our return journey home was, thankfully, uneventful. Our feast, however, most definitely wasn’t.

Two ‘small plates’ of Coconut Panko Crispy Chicken turned out to be not that small at all: mounds of sweet, succulent chicken thigh, still properly crispy and perfectly hot despite being transported home in covered tubs, supplemented by creamy coconut/satay sauce and invigorating pickles, sesame seeds and little flavour bursts of delicious little morsels of delicious stuff. 

To follow (we kept our mains warm in the plate warmer — resourceful, yes?), complex, nutty and deeply umami chicken Massaman and a Thai Thali Bowl: a ‘little bit of everything’ including more of that Massaman, an abundance of robustly-flavoured, deeply umami Spicy Pork Krapow (also available as stand-alone option), crispy cauliflower, more of that chicken, more of that satay sauce (thank goodness, ‘cos I couldn’t get enough of it), more of those pickles and mounds of softly steamed . 

This was a takeaway like no other: fresh, fragrant and flavourful, laden with intelligent balance and attention to detail, and still managing to look beautiful despite the grab’n’go format… all for less than £50 for a feast that would easily have served four normal appetites. 

In the velvet darkness of the blackest night: Raya’s Thai Thali, lighting up everybody’s life.