Andrew Palmer finds himself looking back across the Leeds skyline towards the Pinnacle tower — once the tallest building in the city, and once the site of his first taste of the view from the top — while getting reacquainted with Thai food that has rather more to offer than its postcode suggests.

There is a particular strain of nostalgia that comes from sitting in a restaurant window watching a city get on with its lunch hour, and I make no apology for indulging it. Rambuttri sits on Duke Street, a short stroll from the Playhouse, the College of Music and Northern Ballet, and directly opposite a bus station whose entrance Leeds City Council might usefully take an interest in. That is not a recommendation. It is, however, roughly the extent of my complaints about the location, because inside, the room does something rather clever: it makes you forget the view you had to walk past to get there.

Four decades ago, as a rookie reporter on the Yorkshire Post, I was taken to the top of Pinnacle when it was still the tallest thing on the horizon, a fact that felt very important at the time and now reads like something from a different city entirely. From my window seat I could see it again, hemmed in now by newer, taller neighbours, the low rooftops running out to meet it like a tide going the wrong way. It is remarkable what four decades and a decent gin and tonic will do to your sense of scale.

Rambuttri is the work of chef Komgree "Guy" Santatkollakarn, and trades in the kind of authentic and royal-inspired Thai cooking that is either a genuine point of difference or a menu description doing some heavy lifting, depending on what turns up on the plate.

Spoiled as I am by the Fisk in Harrogate, I went in braced for disappointment. I did not entirely get it, though the meal had the slightly uneven quality of a very good student who has not quite finished their homework.

We were greeted warmly and seated by the window, where the prawn crackers — a modest £4.95, with three dipping sauces — proved a reminder that free bar snacks are as extinct as the view from Pinnacle once was. Undeterred, we ordered from a genuinely tempting menu. I chose the Goong Gratiem, prawns wok-tossed in garlic and pepper and served with roti, largely because it was one of the hottest days of the year and the fiery, aromatic promise of the Tom Yum Goong felt like a step too far. My companion went for the crispy vegetable spring rolls, quietly hoping for a duck version that he would have liked to see on the menu.

The spring rolls, when they came, were properly crisp at the edges, the plum sauce carrying an agreeable hint of apple. My prawns arrived heads-on and slightly softer than ideal, the garlic wanting more conviction and the roti gone limp where it had sat in the sauce too long — though the coriander did more work than either, and the dish was nice enough for it. Still, it made a stronger case for its neighbours on the menu, the dumplings or the soup, than for itself. A finger bowl, given the heads, would not have gone amiss.

Vegetable Spring Rolls

Goong Gratiem,

Where Rambuttri properly earned its keep was in the mains. The crispy shredded beef in a sweet and spicy chilli sauce was the kind of dish that gives Asian cooking in this country a bad name when done lazily — all cornflour and MSG — and a very good one when done properly, as it was here: genuinely crisp, generously portioned, and carrying real chilli heat without losing its balance. The whole boneless sea bass in dry green curry looked spectacular and mostly tasted it, the coconut and sweet basil sauce doing the authentic, aromatic thing it promised, even if the fish itself had firmed up a touch more than I would have liked. It, too, arrived with its head on, and again I found myself asking for a side plate — which came, to be fair, with proper lemon wipes and fresh serviettes, the kind of recovery that suggests a kitchen that knows where its own gaps are.

We skipped dessert. Sticky rice and cream on one of the hottest days of the year felt like a commitment too far, however authentic.

Sea bass

Sticky beef

Service throughout was attentive without hovering and knowledgeable enough to suggest the kitchen's confidence is better placed than its garnishing instincts. This was lunch, in a room that was comfortably rather than fully occupied; I suspect the early-evening version of Rambuttri, with cubicles filled and the bar doing proper business, is a different and probably noisier animal. It is a spacious enough setup, with plenty of covers and a bar area clearly built with volume in mind, though it is a pattern I notice increasingly in new openings: everything scaled up except the facilities, which technically tick the box required of them and no more. Rambuttri is no worse an offender than most, but a little more thought given to that end of things would not go amiss.

Whether Rambuttri has genuinely arrived or is still finding its feet is the sort of question this city has asked of taller and more permanent structures before now. I looked back out at Pinnacle as we left, no longer the tallest thing on the skyline, still standing all the same — and decided that was not a bad way to describe the restaurant beneath it: not yet the finished article, but built on foundations solid enough to be worth the climb.