Cookie occupies the first floor of Curtin House on Swanston Street and combines a Thai restaurant with a bar that is genuinely among the better places to drink in the CBD. The bar section is long and narrow with banquette seating, good natural light in the daytime, and a craft beer selection that has been carefully chosen from Australian and international brewers. In the evening it gets louder and the crowd thickens.
The Thai food is serious — not dumbed-down restaurant Thai but dishes with real heat and complexity. Order from the bar or the kitchen; both operate late. Cookie is busy from early evening and the Curtin House building around it has enough other options (the Rooftop Bar upstairs, a bookshop on the ground floor) to make it a destination rather than just a stop.