Thai

Smoking goat is the new restaurant everyone is talking about. It is a Thai Barbecue restaurant (they say it is in Soho, but it is really closer to Tottenham Court Road and Covent Garden). It opened mid-October and already was full when I went there and is getting more and more attention. The restaurant is owned by Ben Chapman, and the head chef is Seb Homes who comes from the very good Thai restaurant, the Begging Bowl in Peckham.

JaneTira is a Thai street food restaurant in Soho. They say it is a street food restaurant, but a lot of the dishes you get there you can get in other Thai restaurants as well, and I did not have an overwhelming feeling this was street food. The restaurant is very small and located on one of the busiest streets in Soho. I came here for dinner on a Friday evening at around 8pm (such a bad idea!) and had to wait around 30minutes in the queue. I really don’t like waiting in the queue and I usually am very good at going to restaurants at a good time so I don’t have to queue, but not this time. As I said the restaurant is small, people are squeezed in, but in a sort of nice way, and the waitresses are generally very efficient and serve your food to you quickly.

Naamyaa calls itself an all day dining modern Bangkok café and is located in Islington. I read about it in a magazine back in November when it first opened but what really made me want to go there is when one of my friends told me that one of the chefs (David Thomson) involved in Naamyaa used to work for Nahm, the Michelin star Thai restaurant, that recently closed down in London (he and his colleague Yau (creator of Wagamama) which are both behind Naamyaa also opened Busaba Eathai in 1999). Unfortunately when I finally made to Naamyaa David had left and was no longer running the kitchen and some critics say the food has deteriorated ever since.

Thai Square is a chain serving Thai food with 11 restaurants in London and 6 restaurants outside of London. The first restaurant in the Strand (the one I went to) was opened in 1996. Before this visit last time I went to Thai Square was about 7 years ago when I was still a student (the Strand Thai square was close to my university), and I did like it then, but unfortunately the place did let me down this time when I went there and even though the place is not that cheap, it feels like a cheap eatery these days. As a starter I had the Tom Yum Goong soup which is a spicy Thai soup made with prawns, lemongrass and lime leaves. It was typical and it was nice, but I though the really small portion of the soup they gave me for the >£5 was bad, and they could have at least filled the bowl they served the soup in.