Green curry in Glenelg: the street-food way

10 July 2026 · 2 min read · Rim Thang Thai, Glenelg

Green curry is usually the first thing people order at a Thai restaurant, and it's a fair test — the dish shows you exactly what a kitchen is made of. Its Thai name is gaeng keow wan, which literally reads 'sweet green curry'. The 'sweet' trips everyone up: it describes the pale, milky-green colour of the sauce, not the taste. A proper green curry is savoury, herbal and properly hot.

Here's what goes into the real thing, and how we cook ours at 39 Jetty Rd.

What's in real gaeng keow wan

Everything starts with the paste. Green curry paste is a pounded mix of fresh green chillies, lemongrass, galangal, garlic, shallots, kaffir lime and shrimp paste. The fresh green chillies are the point of difference — red curries are built on dried chillies, which is why green curry tastes brighter and hits harder. Of the classic Thai curries, it's usually the hottest.

• Fresh green chillies — the heat and the colour
• Lemongrass and galangal — citrus and pepper through the base
• Kaffir lime — the sharp, perfumed top note
• Shrimp paste — the deep, savoury backbone

Why coconut milk and fresh paste matter

The street-food method is to crack coconut cream in a hot wok first — cooking it until the oil splits out — then fry the paste in that oil until the whole kitchen smells of it. Only then does the rest of the coconut milk go in. That frying step is what wakes the paste up. Stir paste straight into cold coconut milk and you get the flat, one-note green curry that gives the dish a bad name.

Ours is loaded with vegetables — broccoli, carrot, zucchini, bamboo, baby corn and capsicum — so there's texture in every spoonful, not just sauce. The coconut milk does the rest: it carries the heat, softens the edges and turns the paste into something you want to pour over rice.

The final seasoning happens at the end — fish sauce for salt, a little palm sugar for balance. A well-made green curry should land herbal first, hot second, and sweet a distant third. If sweetness is the first thing you taste, someone has taken a shortcut.

Pick your protein

Green curry on our curry menu is priced by protein: tofu or chicken at $21.90, seafood at $25.90, or the combination at $27.90. Worth knowing before you order: our green curry contains dairy, so tell us if that matters for your table.

Tell us your heat level too. Green curry has a reputation for spice, but we'd rather tune it to you than send out a bowl you can't finish. A side of jasmine rice does the heavy lifting — the sauce is the point, and rice is how you get every last bit of it.

Green curry in Glenelg

We're a family-run Thai street-food kitchen at 39 Jetty Rd, cooking dinner seven nights from 5PM. Eat it in the room under the lanterns, next to the tuk-tuk, or order it as takeaway — green curry holds its heat well for the trip home. New to us? Here's how to find us on Jetty Road.