A woman from Melbourne whom I had never met harangued me in the street recently.

“Don’t you think the food is better in Melbourne than Sydney?” she demanded.

“Er, no. Not even slightly.”

“But we have such great restaurants. And the Malaysian. Have you eaten anything like Melbourne Malaysian food?”

I found it difficult to keep a straight face.

“We have five million people in Sydney,” I said. “I think we have all the cuisines covered — including Malaysian.”

Then I went for the killer blow: “How’s the Thai in Melbourne?”

“Oh, oh, you know … it’s improving,” she muttered, sensing defeat. “But, yes, you do have good Thai food.”

Although Sydney doesn’t need to shout its culinary attributes, it’s nevertheless satisfying to say our Thai food is the best in the world outside Thailand.

Even the Thais say so (ask Spice I Am’s Sujet Saenkham and he will tell you as much).

So developed is our Thai food culture that there are distinct sub-branches of it in Sydney, some venues doing northeastern Thai, others doing Bangkok street food and still more doing a mixture.

The new Sugarcane at Coogee is a venue in the tradition of famed Sydney Thai venues Longrain and (the soon to close) Sailors Thai. It’s a glammed-up version of the cuisine where the emphasis is on beautiful plating, slighter sweeter flavours and perhaps less heat and pungency than some of the rip-roaring Isaan venues found in Thai town.

Chef Milan Strbac, who runs the original Sugarcane in Surry Hills and this newcomer, says his cooking is geared more towards Western palates than some, and there’s nothing wrong with that especially in a non-CBD location such as Coogee. Locals have long been seeking a glamorous alternative to the pumping Coogee Pavilion. And now they have it.

The menu is concise and has a brief that goes beyond traditional Thai to dishes from South-East Asia, including Indonesia. Being beachside, there’s a focus on seafood, with ex-Catalina sashimi chef Yoshi Fuchigami doing an excellent line in raw fish.

So start with, say, hiramasa kingfish with roasted rice, chilli, lime and coriander ($22) that’s sashimi only with Thai flavours giving the dish some bite, and refreshing raw scallops ($19) that wear a salty hat of eschalot, green apple and roe. Lovely.

Good too are little rice cakes ($5 each) that come topped with prawns and verdant coriander jazzed up with caramelised sugarcane. If they were cheaper you could probably down 10.

The menu flirts with suburbia via pad Thai ($18) and a sweet, sambally Balinese fried rice ($18).

For more adventurous eating, try the best-selling crispy chicken with quince and blood orange ($27). You’ll get a half bird battered, fried and doused in a sweet, tangy and umami-rich plum-like sauce, its richness cut by a squeeze of lemon juice and crushed peanuts. Excellent. Good too is a fiery green papaya salad ($26) offered with grilled salmon.

There’s more: wagyu rendang ($31), a Malaysian curry of okra and corn ($18), and tofu with snakebean and chilli jam ($15). The cooking is good, hearty and pretty at once.

Chalk it up as another win for Sydney. Keep trying, Melbourne.