A Thai Restaurant
fifteen minutes from South Kirkby

South Kirkby and Moorthorpe sit around ten miles northwest of our kitchen on Copley Road. The A638 runs southeast from the area through Hampole, past the Red House Interchange where it crosses the A1(M) at junction 38, and straight into Doncaster town centre. The drive takes roughly fifteen to eighteen minutes depending on traffic - a clean, predictable route with no motorway junctions to worry about.

There is also a direct train. South Elmsall station, less than a mile from South Kirkby, runs an hourly Northern service to Doncaster in about fifteen minutes. Step off at Doncaster station and walk ten minutes through the town centre past Frenchgate and the Wool Market to reach us on Copley Road. Whether you set off from the streets around All Saints Church, the homes near Moorthorpe station, or the estates between South Kirkby and South Elmsall, you are fifteen to twenty minutes from our door.

• Five tables, intimate by design
• BYO with no corkage, no service charge
• Every dish cooked to order
• Authentic Thai pastes from Thailand
• Fifteen to eighteen minutes from South Kirkby by car

South Kirkby and neighbouring Moorthorpe form a single civil parish in the City of Wakefield, with a population of around eleven thousand. The name derives from Old Norse - kirkju-byr, meaning village with a church - and the town appears in the Domesday Book under the manor of Ilbert de Lacy. All Saints Church in South Kirkby, Grade I listed, still carries thirteenth-century stonework in its nave arcades and circular columns, one of the oldest standing structures in the area.

Like its neighbour South Elmsall, South Kirkby's modern identity was shaped by coal. South Kirkby Colliery opened in 1881 and the town grew rapidly around it, housing nearly all of the three thousand workers the pit employed at its peak. The colliery closed in 1988. Moorthorpe grew alongside the railways - the station on Barnsley Road opened in 1879 on the Swinton and Knottingley Joint Railway, and the Mallard Cafe in the restored station house is still a local landmark. Arthur Wharton, recognised as the world's first Black professional footballer, lived in Moorthorpe - a piece of sporting history that sits quietly in the village's records.

South Kirkby Camp, a scheduled ancient monument west of the town, marks a prehistoric enclosed settlement dating back to around 1000 BC - an oval earthwork bank and ditch from the late Bronze Age. St Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in Moorthorpe, a red brick building from 1928, anchors the village's main road alongside the remaining shops on Barnsley Road. The parish has been twinned with Sprockhövel in Germany's Ruhr Valley since 1981, a connection rooted in the shared industrial heritage of coal.

Halal chicken and beef run across the mains, the full vegan menu sits alongside the standard one, and most mains adapt as gluten free when you flag it. For collection, we send a secure card link by text - you enter the details before setting off and your order is boxed and ready when you arrive.

Charm Thai Cafe is small and deliberate. Five tables in a room with chalkboard specials, decent wine glasses if you bring your own bottle, and time for Rin to taste and balance each dish before it leaves the kitchen. There is no service charge added to the bill - the menu price is what you pay.

The kitchen runs the full menu - curries with imported authentic Thai pastes, freshly mixed Pad Thai sauce per order, handmade starters, the dark noodle soup that has built most of our regulars. Halal chicken and beef are available across the mains; the full vegan menu runs alongside the standard one, using proper vegan oyster sauce for stir fries.

Booking ahead is wise on Friday and Saturday evenings. Book a table online or phone 01302 210408 - midweek you can usually walk in.