June 27th, 2007
We booked a table for 7.30 at the Siam House Thai Restaurant and looked forward to sampling some of our favourite food. Arriving on time, we were quickly seated and looked in earnest at the nicely presented menu. I have a long standing dislike for anything with prawns in it, so asked whether the selection of parcels on the menu contained the offending ingredient. The first person we asked didn’t know what was in the parcels and had to seek the help from a second more experienced waiter. That been sorted we placed our orders and waited for our drink and food to arrive. We hadn’t particularly picked a good night to come as there was a twenty strong ‘office’ party underway and like all these things, most of the people there were vying for the attention of the boss by speaking as loudly as possible and laughing at every ‘joke’.
Anyway while waiting we looked around and while the restaurant prides itself of having been open over forty years, we noticed that the decor was probably just as old. The carpet although not threadbear could certainly have done with a deep clean. The beer and wine soon arrived. Dusty had ordered a Singa Light and I had ordered the house white wine. The wine was OK and reasonably priced and it was good to see they weren’t forcing the high intake of alchohol by only giving a 175ml option. However Dusty’s beer was not so good when he read the best before date on the bottle which read 15 May 07. We pointed this out and to their credit they replaced it quickly with another bottle (which had 12 days left before its own Best before date was up) and apologised.
The starters arrived and were nicely presented. The chicken Satay itself was very good, but spoilt by a very weak watery peanut based satay sauce. The ribs which we had also ordered were very nice.
Having finished that they quickly cleared the dishes but left the cutlery which we had used as they clearly expected us to use it again for the main (It is a mark of a restaurant as far as we are concerned when they don’t offer you clean cutlery, this wasn’t particularly helped by the paper knapkins in use which we have a complete dislike of). Again while we waited for our main dishes to arrive and again turned our attention to the decor. The wallpaper was again quite dated and peeling of in parts, the chairs were not that comfortable, but to be fair we are a bit fussy when it comes to our comfort.
Feeling a little trepidation our main dishes arrived. I had a Thai green chicken curry (my usual) and Dusty went for a Chicken Penang. We were really pleased to discover that these two dishes were really good. The flavours stood out with the right mixture of ‘Thai Heat’ and we thoroughly enjoyed them. Dusty even finished his completely which is unusual even in our most favourite of Thai restaurants.
So that was it, the starters were ok, spoilt only by a watery satay sauce, but the main dishes were very nice. The decor let the place down but the service was quick, polite and professional.
We would recommend it for the food, but not if you are looking to impress someone with fine decor. Take them to the Sangthai at Escrick instead.
Score: 2 Stars. Visited June 2007
Posted in Food and Drink