Restaurant reviews in Pattaya and Bangkok

[SirL]

This thread will hopefully contain a series of reviews of restaurants I'll be visiting in Pattaya and Bangkok.  Pattaya has a greater international variety of restaurants than almost anywhere in the world, and I'm hoping to cover as many nationalities as possible.  I won't be limiting restaurants I visit and write about to those under B300, or those offering western food.  I like Thai, Indian, Japanese and Chinese food and I've got some ideas for Indonesian, Mexican and Persian food.  I might be eating a food court dish for B30 or a sushi buffet for B600, but maybe I'll be averaging B250 or so for a meal.  I live in southern France and know French and Italian food very well, but I don't like English food, particularly fried breakfasts, or American chain restaurants.  Some American guys here know American food (BBQ ribs, Cajun) and Mexican food much better than me. 

I don't have my own transport, and so I'm only really interested in places that can be easily reached by walking, baht bus or Skytrain.  I can see that restaurants inland on the dark side are cheaper than ones that can be reached by baht bus, but I think their pricing is a different market and irrelevant because they're inaccessible to most visitors like me.

Eatigo is a useful website for restaurant-goers, particularly in Bangkok, and particularly if you like to eat at off-peak times.  Discounts of 10% to 50% are available by booking a table via Eatigo, as restaurants cut their prices to put bums on off-peak seats.  In Pattaya my natural eating times are usually (no breakfast) an early lunch at 1100-1230, because I get up late, and a late afternoon meal at 1600-1800 before heading out, both of which are kind of off-peak eating times, and as you'll read a 50% discount is sometimes available via Eatigo eating at those times.  I know someone will pop up and say I'm being a CC eating at 1630, but eating at that sort of time to me is not about being CC, that's simply when I naturally want to eat if I've had an early brunch.  If you want to eat at more expensive times, up to you.

I'm reckoning on spending about 80% of my time in Pattaya, and 20% in Bangkok - that's a day or two a week in Bangkok.  I'll be in Bangkok more at the beginning, but the proportion of Bangkok restaurants will reduce as my trip goes on.

[SirL]

Pier 21 at Terminal 21, Asoke, Bangkok                              Food: B58

I didn't like the food on this visit, but on many previous visits I've eaten good food here.

Pier 21 is a very popular food court on the fifth floor of the Terminal 21 building near soi Cowboy. I've been here about twenty times in recent years, and I like this place. It's now so popular that it's very crowded and difficult to find an empty table.

BangkokBits wrote some good stuff about this food court, a couple of years ago, on http://www.bangkokbits.com/food/the-complete-guide-to-pier-21-terminal-21/

She seemed to know what she was writing, so on my visit I tried to target her favourite dishes to eat something new to me. Reading her review, I made notes that the dishes I wanted to try were

#15 Skyluck. Rice with Korean pork, Yakitori chicken, or Gyoza

#19 Thomchai Tom Yum Noodle. Hot and spicy noodle soup with marinated pork and boiled egg

#21 Kuay Jab Sam Toom. Sticky rice noodle rolls with roast pork

#22 Pad Thai. Pad Thai with shrimps

#25 Jae Auan Champ Rad Na Yaowarat. Wide rice noodles with pork in gravy w vegetables

#26 Kha Moo Nakornpathom. Rice with stewed pork leg + egg

#28 Tai Heng Sukiyaki. Stir fried sukiyaki with pork

 

Hot and spicy noodle soup with marinaded pork and boiled egg B29. This was far too hot and spicy for my taste, so hot and spicy that I was blowing my nose half a dozen times within the first few mouthfuls. The marinaded pork was almost tasteless. Sorry, but this was a Don't Order Again.

 

Wide rice noodles with gravy pork and vegetable B29. This was lukewarm, and the gravy a bit congealed. I wasn't having much luck, because this was a Don't Order Again as well.

 

Food taste 4/10 I didn't like either of BB's recommendations at all, though the hot and spicy noodle soup would probably go down well for different people. Perhaps the moral of this is just to choose dishes by sight that I like the look of, rather than ones suggested by some random online, and maybe I don't like dishes as spicy as BB. In the past I've happily eaten many dishes that cost B30-50, that I'd give 6/10 or 7/10 for taste.

Value for money 9/10 At B29 for each dish, maybe I shouldn't be too picky, but I've done much better than this before at Pier21

Would I go again? Yes, definitely. I've been here about twenty times before, and always enjoyed it more than this. Thousands of meals a day are produced in here, and some won't work out. It's a good place and I recommend anyone go there.

 

Another notable thing about Pier 21 is the toilets, which contain those fancy Japanese toilets that fire warm water at your ass, blow dry it, and for all I know waft a puff of talcum powder over it. If you're into those sort of toilets, here they are, in a public shopping centre for free.

[SirL]

Atelier at the Pullman Grande Sukhumvit, Asoke, Bangkok              Food: B481 at 50% Eatigo discount

A fantastic hotel lunch buffet, many choices of healthy Asian dishes

The Pullman Grande Sukhumvit is a large flashy hotel just a minute or two's walk north of soi Cowboy in Bangkok. Atelier is its main restaurant, easy to find on the second floor. It uses Eatigo, so I found a time to go at 50% off. There are many similar big hotel buffets on Eatigo, and I chose Atelier because the restaurant of this hotel appears to have a particularly good reputation. The normal full price of this buffet would be about B860 total.

This hotel is aimed towards the Asian market, and the lunch buffet was more orientated towards salad, and Asian food, than most I've been to recently. Just looking around the dining tables, almost all other customers were Asian. Western food represented only about a fifth of the buffet choices available – there was as much choice of each of Japanese, Chinese, Indian or Thai food as there was Western food.

There's a good 360 degree panorama view around the buffet area on Google at

https://www.google.com/maps/@13.7390593,100.5620332,3a,75y,293.73h,77.08t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPKASBPsxL-xj8NX9qZUoI45SmfFq4PkxClElbL!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPKASBPsxL-xj8NX9qZUoI45SmfFq4PkxClElbL%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya189.39076-ro-0-fo100!7i7998!8i3999

My picture taken at the same spot as the google one is

 

Food taste: 9/10 Many choices of delicious Chinese, Japanese and western food. I tried 20 or 30 different items I liked, any of which would have been a good main course on its own.

Value for money: 7/10 at the Eatigo price of B481

Would I go again? Yes, absolutely. My only reservation is that there are dozens of fairly similar looking fancy hotel buffets on Eatigo in Bangkok, and I'd like to try some of them as well. But at 50% off with Eatigo I'd certainly recommend Atelier to anyone. I think I'd prefer to visit Atelier above, at about the same price, the Hilton Edge lunch and the Sportsman Sunday roast (IMO the best one) in Pattaya. I'm expecting to eat and write about many restaurants in the next eight weeks here, and I think this may be amongst the most memorable.

[SirL]

Alibaba, Pattaya Klang                         Food: B95

Comedy time as I try a special offer at a dodgy Indian restaurant

Alibaba? What's that? Why?

I was drawn to Alibaba by this voucher appearing on one of the FB groups. B500 off? Surely there must be a catch in the Terms and Conditions?

A couple of reviews appeared online, with pics of their bills showing the B500 fairly deducted, and I thought this was for real. Surely this offer wouldn't last long, as all the CCs in Pattaya hoovered up, so I had to get there quickly, which is why I made it the first restaurant I went to in Pattaya on this trip. I had ideas of waltzing in, ordering B450 of tasty curry, and maybe repeating the process every few days, perhaps wearing a variety of hats and false moustaches. Yes! There really is such a thing as a free lunch! Sadly, dear readers, no there isn't, and Santa Claus doesn't exist either.

So I turned up, and surprisingly when there was such a great offer on, the dining room was almost empty. Just a family with a couple of annoying children at the next table, who left after five minutes, and then I was on my own. Where were all the CCs? Why hadn't soi Buakhao transplanted en masse into this restaurant? Sadly those Buakhao guys know better than me, or more likely, they just don't read restaurant groups on FB.

The most difficult part of the challenge was to order just the right quantity of food to make best use of the B500 off. I worked my way through a fairly lengthy menu, all the time watched by three waiters in fancy Indian outfits and the owner, just me in an empty dining room.

Here are a couple of pages of the long menu

I knew from the reviews that 10% service and 7% tax were going to be added, so I suppose I was aiming for about B420 of food. At this point the scene resembled one of those Monty Python restaurant comedy sketches, and I was half expecting John Cleese to appear dressed as an Indian restaurant owner. Did I have the nerve to order just B400 of food? Sorry, dear readers, I just didn't have the balls, maybe the owner would have told me to sod off if I'd tried that, as it would have been all too obvious. So I tried to think of an order that sort of made sense as a meal and came to a little over B500. There was a lot of menu to work through, and I took ages, but eventually chose Butter Chicken and a Puri, which were recommended by one of the reviews I'd read, along with Aloo Gobi. They accepted the order, so I reckoned I'd pitched it about right.

The Butter Chicken was OK I suppose, though I've had better curry bought from a supermarket. In the Aloo Gobi, the potatoes were undercooked and the cauliflower was very overcooked, so much that it was almost black and barely recognisable. I'm not sure why anyone would recommend the Puri. I don't want to write too much about the food, I'm concerned about writing something which could be taken as libellous.

I bolted it down, asked for and paid the bill, and ran away.

Food taste: 3/10 It seemed to me that the cauliflower was first cooked at least a week ago. Fortunately I had no health issues in the hours following.

Value for money: 7/10 Even for just B95 it wasn't compelling value.

Would I return? No, and I don't recommend anyone reading this makes use of this offer.

Would I want to eat the same food again for B95? No, life isn't that long.

Would I eat it for free? Not really, there really isn't such a thing as a good free lunch, or Santa Claus.

Would I eat it at full price, ie paying B595? You must be joking.

 

[Kreggerz]

Yeah, Ali Baba is a tourist trap. I also tried one of their special offers. Not that one and not nearly as generous. The reception I got was icy cold and the food was crap. Never again. 

[SirL]

RichMan PoorMan, Jomtien                  Food: B180

A good value ribs special, perhaps overcooked and covered with too much sauce

I took a baht bus to near the edge of the known world, in southern Jomtien, to try the ribs special as advertised at RMPM. I should write up front that I know little about BBQ ribs, certainly much less than some of the American ribs nerds who come out and get very technical about exactly how ribs should be cooked. I've only ever eaten ribs once or twice, just in Pattaya, but I'd like to try them. Where I live we don't really eat the parts of animals that Americans get all excited by, like ribs and chicken wings, so it's all new to me.

RMPM seems to have a good reputation around here, and this special seems to get the likes of jh excited, so I'm ready to be impressed. I was expecting to get 6-8 ribs (see FB post), or a "half rack" (see handwritten board) but I seemed to get a total of 12 bits of bone (see pic) so were they particularly generous? The meat containing the thinner bones was hiding below the larger piece as they were served in my pic. How many ribs do you expect to get for "half rack" and "full rack"? 12 ribs worth?

I think the ribs I got were fairly fully cooked/smoked, perhaps too much so(?) The meat certainly came off the bone easily, and there was none of the chewing bones that apparently hardcore ribs fans want to do. The meat was certainly tasty, but it was smothered in a lot of brown sweet (barbeque?) sauce and I'd prefer to have been able to taste the meat more.

I'm not going to give marks out of ten for ribs, because I know so little about how the dish is supposed to appear. Some American ribs nerd would appear and tell me how little I know, but I'm already well aware of that.

Food taste: Pretty good, but I struggle to see what the excitement is all about.

Value for money: Those who know more than me think that RMPM's ribs special is a very good deal.

Would I return? Unconvinced. I don't really get this ribs thing, but I'm trying something new. I didn't see much on the normal RMPM menu to tempt me this far south again, I think it's mainly for hardcore American food fanatics.

Here are some pages of the normal RMPM menu

 

There are several other good-looking specials and places to get ribs around town at B200 or less, which I'll be visiting soon. Licence to Grill has a B199 ribs special tonight, but I think I'll leave it for a few days. Everyone seems to get very excited by the Smokin' Joes ribs, which no doubt I'll eat sometime soon, but those are quite a bit more expensive than some of the <B200 specials.

[Marcus85]

Thanks for your reviews, this section has been dead for a few weeks now. 

[Madzar]

Enjoying this keep em comin!

[SirL]

12 minutes ago, Madzar said:

Enjoying this keep em comin!

Thanks.  I'm in Pattaya for nearly eight weeks, so this so far is just the start of a long journey.  I think I've got lots of good ideas for restaurants I want to visit.  Keep following!

[jiml]

Where is license to grill located,

[ChiFlyer]

Good topic. I am arriving in Thailand in about 10 days. I am staying for 4 months this time. I have been giving increasing thought to making the move on a permanent basis.

I have attached a restaurant list that I maintain. It focuses on higher end western cuisine places and I will be renting a motor bike, so my view of things is different than yours.

Still I thought you might find some food for thought.

Oh - btw - White Pines (listed at the end) seems to be in a down period these days.

 

Restaurants V08.20180101.pdf

[Halfaboy]

You could add (amongst others):

1) Aquapazza (Trappaya Road near the District Court)

2 l'Áuberge (Pratamnak Road between Soi 4 and 5)

Note that Mata Hari (not on your list) has closed).

[JohnDoesPattaya]

Good thread and it's great that you post some pictures from the menu aswell! 
 

[SirL]

1 hour ago, JohnDoesPattaya said:

Good thread and it's great that you post some pictures from the menu aswell! 

Thanks.  Yes, I try to write up the restaurants in a standard format of what I would find useful, though I sometimes forget to take a pic of one of the components.  I try to go

Summary

Pic from outside

Screenshot of map

Pic of dining room inside

Pics of menu

Pics of my actual food

Pic of bill if the price or discount was key to the whole eating there idea, or in some way might be disputed.

Food taste:

Value for money:

Would I return?

It was difficult to remember everything when I was in Bangkok as all my stuff was in a suitcase and internet access was difficult, but now I'm unpacked in a Pattaya condo things will get easier and smoother.

[SirL]

Casa Pascal                                 Food: B251

Good but no longer great brunch buffet with cook to order station

Casa Pascal is a long-running quality restaurant in Pattaya which does a popular brunch buffet which runs until I think 2pm daily.

Everyone notices the quality of the croissants which on my visit were soft and warm. They are better than supermarket croissants at my local Carrefour in France, but not as good as those from the boulangerie around the corner from my house. They appeared to run out at around 10am, but perhaps they were replenished again, I didn't notice.

I've been to CP several times in the past and I think the quality of the sliced meats has reduced. The little pile of cheese chunks looked a little hardened by exposure to air. I think the key to getting value for money is to choose good things from the cook to order guy outside, who does things like pancakes, omelettes and so on. There is a jug of what is labelled as Maple Syrup available in the buffet, but I didn't try that.

Food taste: 7/10 I think the quality has reduced in recent years.  Speed of replenishment wasn't great.

Value for money: 6/10 CP is one of the more expensive breakfast buffets in central Pattaya, but perhaps some of the ones under B200 may be almost as good

Would I return? Probably, but there are several other breakfast buffets I want to try before I do so. Other breakfast buffets that catch my eye include Flipper House (B199), Bay Breeze (B150), The Hive (B140), Holiday Inn (B299), hotel Danmark (B190) and Sandbar by the Sea (about B180).  Internet chatter is excited by the buffet at the Holiday Inn at the Beach Rd end of soi 1, which is expensive but apparently wide-ranging and well worth it.  Up in soi 1 is IMO a pain to get to when I'm half asleep and it closes at 10.30am sharp, so I may not get there.

[SirL]

TescoLotus home grocery delivery                         Discount: B350 and no delivery charge

Great idea to buy food for your condo

Of course it's not a restaurant but it's food related.  https://shoponline.tescolotus.com/groceries/en-GB/ deliver with no delivery charge and a couple of discounts if you buy a larger quantity.  

The best reason to get TL to deliver to you at home is that they transport this sort of heavy stuff all the way to your condo kitchen.  A pain to carry yourself:

I qualified for a B350 discount

There is no minimum order for free delivery, and the delivery guy said he delivered orders for B100 or B200 total.  His smallest delivery had been for B19 total, which he did for free with no problem.

If you're aiming for one of the quantity discounts, give yourself some headroom in order size above that price level because you may want to reject some of the substitutions their stockpickers will have made.  I didn't actually reject anything, though I was expecting to do so.

Would I return? Yes, certainly.  Very convenient, but I'll also go to supermarkets in person when I want to choose things carefully.

[Taa_Saparot]

12 hours ago, jiml said:

Where is license to grill located,

It is the BBQ side of Retox on Soi Lengkee.

[soi16]

1 hour ago, SirL said:

The little pile of cheese chunks

These things on the table. Edam is about  440b/kg.

1 hour ago, SirL said:

TescoLotus home grocery delivery                         Discount: B350 and no delivery charge

Do they also deliver fresh food? Ham, sausage ....? BigC does not.

[KittenKong]

2 hours ago, SirL said:

I've been to CP several times in the past and I think the quality of the sliced meats has reduced. The little pile of cheese chunks looked a little hardened by exposure to air.

......

I think the key to getting value for money is to choose good things from the cook to order guy outside, who does things like pancakes, omelettes and so on.

I've been going to Casa Pascal every couple of weeks for many years. I think that it is still the best value for the price, but it does depend somewhat on which day you go. For example, you got dry hard cheese yet the other day I had juicy mozzarella. The type and quality of the cold meats does vary also, and I'm not a great fan of anonymous Bologna, but I am pleased to see that they have brought the smoked fish back as they stopped having it at one point.

I did notice the other day that they were very full and that it was taking a long time to refill some dishes. I put this down to high season madness and I'm sure it will be back to normal very soon.

Personally I dont bother with the outside cooking station at all as I dont think much of the quality of the BBQ ingredients, and they are very slow.

 

2 hours ago, SirL said:

Internet chatter is excited by the buffet at the Holiday Inn at the Beach Rd end of soi 1, which is expensive but apparently wide-ranging and well worth it. 

I went and looked and left without eating a couple of weeks before Xmas. Nothing special at all as far as I could see, though not a bad price for a big hotel.

[SirL]

1 hour ago, soi16 said:

Do they also deliver fresh food? Ham, sausage ....? BigC does not.

My order included fresh chicken and pork, which I thought were surprisingly cheap, so yes.  A couple of my plastic bags full of stuff were chilled eg dairy, and the delivery guy made a point of saying "chilled" as he unloaded his trolley to me.  Best thing is for you to look through TL's website https://shoponline.tescolotus.com/groceries/en-GB/ , it's all on there.

 

45 minutes ago, KittenKong said:

For example, you got dry hard cheese yet the other day I had juicy mozzarella.

The cheese I was referring to was on the far right of

ie some sort of cheddar-ish cheese, which seemed to have partly gone the slightly darker yellow that cheese left out does.  I didn't actually look very closely at it.  I'd certainly have preferred, and eaten, mozzarella.

 

45 minutes ago, KittenKong said:

I did notice the other day that they were very full and that it was taking a long time to refill some dishes. I put this down to high season madness and I'm sure it will be back to normal very soon.

When I entered at about 9 or 9.30 it was fairly quiet with only about four tables inside occupied, but by the time I left at 10 or 10.30 almost all the tables were busy.

[SirL]

I've just been to Big C on Pattaya Klang to buy amongst a few other things a frying pan that my condo doesn't have, and some bread.  I noticed and bought some smoked salmon there, that I had looked for but couldn't find on TL's website.  IMO a combination of delivery and go-yourself supermarket shopping works best.  Now I can make my own scrambled eggs and smoked salmon at home.  

Does anyone know of a good place to buy avocados at a fair price?

[soi16]

50 minutes ago, SirL said:

were chilled

The most important!

[soi16]

42 minutes ago, SirL said:

bought some smoked salmon

Did you bought Thai made?

Last time I bought that it was very weird taste, as it was smoked with diesel! Very bitter.

Maybe they use coconut shells for smoking?

45 minutes ago, SirL said:

Does anyone know of a good place to buy avocados at a fair price?

Nowhere. In okt-nov Thai avocados, 5pc/100b.

[SirL]

1 hour ago, soi16 said:

Did you bought Thai made?

Last time I bought that it was very weird taste, as it was smoked with diesel! Very bitter.

Maybe they use coconut shells for smoking?

This is the smoked salmon I bought in Big C Pattaya Klang this morning.  Haven't tried any yet, it might well be rubbish!

 

[SirL]

1 hour ago, soi16 said:

The most important!

Yes, the chilled stuff was at a properly cool temperature at the moment of delivery, and assuming it had been at close to that temp throughout the process then it was looked after OK, no problem.  My delivery included milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, fresh chicken and pork and several other things that needed to be kept chilled.  Drinking some milk in my coffee now and it's fine. [I actually ordered semi-skimmed but they substituted full fat 55555, I guess the Thais haven't got the concept behind why farangs have semi-skimmed milk]

 

Now I have food in the condo I might pause a little on restaurants, but I'll be back.

One thing I've heard of is that the Sizzler salad buffet is on special of B139 salad only until the end of January, at restaurants including RGP.  I'll be eating that every few days and any fellow rabbit food consumers might be interested as well.