Visitors to Ballarat love panning for gold at Sovereign Hill but Bakery Hill, just minutes away, holds a gem of its own: an uncommonly good contemporary Thai restaurant glowing with imagination, energy, and old fashioned commitment.

Catfish Thai is its name and owner-chef Damien Jones – almost always found behind the stove – is the Ballarat man mining magic from this singular Asian cuisine.

“Ours is a shared dining experience,’’ he explains of his stylish 70-seater. So larger dishes at Catfish – balancing the sweet and sour with the hot and salty, are always taken together with rice. Steamed jasmine rice, to be exact, scooped from a bowl with a stylish wooden spatula.

Dining here, in a room painted bordello red with grey trim, you might luck upon a salad of roast duck with squelchy, lychee-like longans. Or a slow-cooked beef cheek curry, heady with onions and coriander. Then again, you might not.

The Catfish menu is often refreshed and Jones, a disciple of David (Nahm) Thompson, is on a constant quest for superior ingredients. His sensibly priced ‘Tasting Plate’ of street snacks showcases them: lime-dressed oysters and sticky Berkshire pork skewers, peppered soft shell crab and emerald green betel leaves embracing smoked scallops.

Traditional techniques may underpin Catfish, but Jones’s view of Thai food is elastic enough to accommodate a playful dessert combining peanut ice cream, chocolate rough and raspberry marshmallow.

Must eat dish: Salad of roast duck
Instagram: @catfishthai