Tipped

Bad bad bad - very very very bad

May 09, 2008

This was not only the worst Thai food I have ever eaten in my life (in Thailand or the UK) but one of the worst meals I have ever had in a restaurant.

You would not think a supposedly Thai place could go wrong with such basics as a Thai salad, followed by Pad Thai (me) and a green curry (my partner). Er, you would be wrong. Very wrong.

The salad arrived in a large pestle and mortar !?!? (the only reason I can think of being that it was to make the rather small amount of salad look bigger). The salad consisted of carrot grated so coarsely it was almost chunks, some tasteless white stuff (which according to the menu was supposed to be payaya) and, weirdly, a few raw green beans. Instead of that lovely subtle Thai mix of flavours I was expecting from the dressing, the whole thing just tasted of chilli. Apart from the beans, which tasted as you'd expect and were not a happy addition to the dish.

The "curry" was a bowl of sauce in which were about five small pieces of pork and - bizarrely - bamboo shoots. As my partner said, more like a soup, given the ratio of liquid to solid. It was accompanied by possibly the smallest bowl of rice I have ever seen a restaurant produce.

The Pad Thai was quite tasteless, and covered by a net of that crispy brown stuff you get round the edges of an egg after you've fried it. No sign of much of what usually goes into a Pad Thai, such as dried prawns or peanuts, though there was a lump of rice noodles so at least they got that right.

So was anything OK? Well the Thai beer was good, and at nearly three quid for a very small bottle it should have been. They were keen for us to order more beer - we were just keen to get out of the restaurant.

I wrote on the credit card slip "food was not very nice" and told the waitress they should get a different chef. She said "but our chef has been here for many years."

I cannot understand how anybody would visit this restaurant twice unless they had no taste buds. Even if you'd never had Thai food before, you couldn't possibly think this was good.

Oh, and I just read the review before this one - and I had a hair too, in the Pad Thai. Do they add one to each dish as some sort of signature?

Tags: cuisine: thai

Apalling Thai restaurant

March 25, 2008

I have eaten Thai food all over the world - sometimes even in Thailand. I have eaten in restaurants, cafes and once from a street cart in Hat Yai bus station. I have never in all my many years of loving Thai food, ever experienced such a duff meal as I did on Saturday evening in Sawadee.

Imagine, if you will, that you've cooked a chopped chicken breast for ooooh, around 10 minutes in the microwave. You've sloshed some watery, flavourless, non-descript sauce on it, added a few cashew nuts and flung in a couple of pieces of dried red chilli. Would *you* be happy to serve that to a paying customer? No, neither would I, but this is precisely what it seemed I *had* been served, masquerading as chicken with cashew nut and chilli, at Sawadee. And there was a hair in it, which certainly wasn't mine.

We also had to ask more than once before our beers finally turned up.

I'd avoid this place like the plague. There are several other Thai options, all within spitting distance and they can't possibly be worse.

Tags: Thai, Brighton