Sweet Monster

Tony Kaewsongsri and Beenie Chankaew, a husband-and-wife team who migrated from Thailand, sell up to 500 boxes of mango sticky rice in a single afternoon from their small shopfront on George Street, near World Square. The dish is a stack of alternating black and pandan-tinted white sticky rice, topped with coconut cream and fresh mango and made fresh daily; the rest of the case runs to durian sticky rice, layered pandan jelly cakes and sugarcane juice pressed to order. It is a tiny, grab-and-go counter set into the flow of Chinatown foot traffic, popular with office workers on lunch break and visitors drawn in by the queue that regularly forms outside. Open seven days, later on weekends, it is a fast, inexpensive way to taste home-style Thai dessert in the middle of the CBD rather than at a sit-down restaurant.