jfchandler

Thai street food prices around my home in lower Sukhumvit vary by what's on offer, and what you get for your money.

There's a shop on my soi where all the food is pre-cooked and sits around in metal trays for most of the day and night. Cost per entree with rice, 20 to 25 baht depending. Though the meat and seafood offerings tend to be a bit funky... Like if you order chicken curry, you'll tend to get more bones and skin than real meat.

This shop also is the place that gave me a terrible case of food poisoning and later that my local Thai friends advised me never to eat at, because the owner has a practice, they told me, of recycling the leftover food from one day to the next. For 20 baht per entree, should I really have been surprised???

There's also a different street-side shop nearby where they cook everything fresh to order. All the meats and seafood choices are available, and when you order chicken or beef, you get real chicken and beef... not bones or innards. Price per entree... 40 baht. Never gotten sick there yet.

Then there's another shop/cart nearby where the husband and wife will fix fresh, cooked to order gai yang, moo yang, nam tok moo/gai and larb moo... again... 40 baht per order. No place to sit, except a couple metal tables and plastic stools nearby.

So, whether the price is 49 or 109 baht, given that it's in a formal restaurant setting in a mall with air con and all the amenities, I'd say that's a hard deal to beat.

PS - OT, I have another appointment at Sanam Pao tomorrow (same as last night), and am planning on having us stop by there for lunch before we head out for a day at the Dusit Zoo... I'll be bringing my appetite with me...

Or even.. how about some size in terms of Sq. Mt....

Current MJ renewal pricing/offer....

I think two people in particularly have gotten seriously off-post/topic here....

Recess is over... Back to school, children....

Charlies (suk 11) last night was pretty average for the fajitas - chicken was very bland. Refried beans were good though, and the pitcher of sangria was awesome. Still suffering from that now!

Tapas Cafe, next door, makes a delicious fruit sangria and has a two-for-one happy hour special for all their sizes of sangria... But I didn't know that Charlie Browns Mexican place nearby also has a sangria on their menu??? Their margaritas are nice, though not quite to the level or extent of Coyotes... But I'd think the sangria at Tapas Cafe is hard to beat both in terms of flavor and price...particularly at Happy Hour.

I agree that really good Thai restaurants are more the exception, than the rule, in lower Sukhumvit -- exactly the opposite of the International dining options.

One exception for Thai dining, however, is the very pleasant Rosabieng restaurant in Suk Soi 11, opposite the Ambassador Hotel... Great outdoor patio dining, as well as air con indoor restaurant. A vast, albeit somewhat poorly organized menu. Trying to find what you want, or the kind of food you want, can be a real chore given the size of the menu and how it's organized. Very good Thai food, including many seafood choices. Very reasonable, though not cheap, prices. A lot of dishes you just won't find at the typical Thai restaurants around town. Live music outdoors many evenings. Good service and staff. Never had a bad meal there. And they even have an outdoor covered gazebo table that sits beside a small pond they have, which makes for a very romantic setting for a meal, provided you can keep the mosquitoes at bay...

One past review posted on the web is here...

Uhh... I think I just said that... two posts above....

I should have mentioned before, but will now, there is a very economically priced seafood option in lower Sukhumvit that has been pretty good every time I've been there... It's just not exactly a traditional restaurant.

On Suk Soi 7, just across the street from the infamous Soi 7 Beer Garden, there is a large covered outdoor eating patio that is ringed by mostly seafood oriented food stalls. It may have an actual name like Seafood Something...but it escapes me now.

At any rate, have had many varieties of seafood there and not been disappointed any time -- all at pretty reasonable, Thai prices.

It's a great location for watching the ladies (and their dates) come and go from the Beer Garden in the late afternoon and evenings. And they often pop across the street to sit for a drink, fix makeup and chatter outside of the Beer Garden.

But, it's outdoors and thus no air con, the tables and chairs are the simplest metal, and the service is pretty much the order and run variety, because they're usually pretty busy and not so many staff. So for that reason, it wasn't the right place to take the GF the other night.

But for a bit of fun, or for some reasonably priced Thai seafood and a very large set of menu offerings, it's a good place to go in the area.

Also Somboon on Bantadthong Road (and elsewehre) for probably the best fried curry crab (Puu Phad Pon Karii) in town.

http://www.somboonseafood.com/e-index.html

Nordlys...thanks for the mention of Somboon Seafood... I haven't been there yet, but I know of the place and have heard and read many good things about it... I actually mentioned it to the GF as a suggestion the other night, but she was hungry, and didn't want to drive across from Sukhumvit to Silom late in the evening. For anyone who remembers Britain's "Rumpole of the Bailey" TV series, the phrase comes to mind... "she who must be obeyed..."

jfc

you have been here long enough now to know to avoid like the plague anything in this area, as others have pointed out nothing but overpriced clip jonts.

RGS... thanks very much for the suggestions/recommendations for Talay Bangkok and Baroque. Both are new names for me, so I'll certainly put them down on my list of places to try.

I'm always willing to try pretty much any place once...just to know personally and for the experience. But whether I'm willing to go back for a second time is the real test, and for value reasons, I'm not sure I'd be heading back to Seafood Market anytime soon.

That said, however, my GF very much enjoyed her dinner and the evening we had out. So that made it a good evening for us, notwithstanding the price. Not everything in this world comes down to money. Sometimes, a genuine smile makes everything worthwhile.

I'm not sure what you meant above by "avoid like the plague anything in this area." While Sukhumvit may not have the largest concentration of good Thai restaurants (although there certainly are at least a few very good ones around), it's certainly among the best for any variety of international restaurants and eateries. And many of them are perfectly reasonably priced and sometimes great values... not all overpriced clip joints.

So in my life here, what I often find myself doing is eating regular, simple Thai food every day from the street vendors and small shops around my home... usually in the 20-50 baht per entree range. But then when we go out to restaurants for eating, it tends to be non-Thai places, and most usually at very reasonable prices.

Hadn't really thought about that approach before... But... I'd say... YES YOU CAN...

If two people both have Magic Jack numbers (meaning U.S. area code numbers), and they wanted to call each other (going either way), I'd assume that would work under the Magic Jack system, since each phone would see the other as a U.S.-based number.

Never tried it, but, I'd like to know the outcome.

Bangkok Baking Co. at the JW Marriott on Suk Road near Soi 2.... Muffins galore... and half price sale for an hour at dinner time every day...

But... I don't think they're stocking the kind of muffs James is referring to...except perhaps upstairs in the hotel's rooms...

The part about the Thai bank where the OP has his bank funds, and a Thai credit card I presume, deducting double the amount of his credit card limit from his bank account balance is STRANGE...

I can understand deducting from the bank account balance whatever amount might be outstanding on the credit card. But I've never heard of a bank deducting double the amount of the card's unused credit limit, even if there is no outstanding balance on the card.

Of course, if the bank had not done that, the OP would not have been short of the required funds at Immigration. What Thai bank was the culprit in this???

I certainly don't disagree with the general flavor of the comments expressed above... And, the issues some of you raise are ones I also addressed in my review. So no argument coming from me on these things....

But...all of this begs the question. I too know a bunch of good seafood restaurants, generally located in the vicinity of the Chao Phraya River. But this was Friday night late, I live in Sukhumvit, and I had a VERY HUNGRY GF who just got off work and who really wanted to go for seafood without a long drive across town. So the question was: where is there a good Thai seafood restaurant in the Sukhumvit area...

Even closer to my home, there is the live seafood restaurant near the Asoke BTS station on Sukhumvit Road. But I've never gone there also, because it has an even worse reputation for overpricing and being oriented to fleecing tourists.... So I didn't even think of that place. But we wanted to try someplace new, not just the same places locally we'd been before...

So, if anyone has alternate suggestions for Thai seafood not too far from the general Asoke area, please do chime in....

I've been to another big place, more of a traditional restaurant, I think its name begins with N, over by RCA that is set around a lake and has, if I recall, a pretty good seafood selection along with a live singer and band. But I can never remember the name or exactly where it's located. If had I thought of that Friday night, instead of just now, we might have gone there instead...

Assuming you have the correct computer setup...you can MAKE FREE calls from anywhere in the world TO any phone numbers in the U.S. and Canada...using Magic Jack...

And... people anywhere in the world can call your Magic Jack number, which typically will have a U.S. area code that the Magic Jack user has selected. In my case, I picked a number with the same area code as my parents, so they can always call me here in Thailand as a local/no cost call for them.

Sounds like we need to be forming a California alumnus chapter of Thai Visa here...

Speaking as an Oakland-born and Hayward raised boy...

It is called the Soi 8 Pub, just a block inside Sukhumvit Soi 8 and likewise a block from the Nana BTS station up at the corner.

Very popular for their free Friday night BBQ, also for football and such matches, and I believe draws more of an Australian crowd and the like... Has a large outdoor patio on the front Soi 8 street side, but the owner still permits smoking inside the pub. There was a TV meet-up there a few months back.

It's also located a short distance away from Lolita's, which is on a side soi opposite.

I live nearby, but always avoid the place. I don't care for their smoking policy, and I don't prefer beetroot on my hamburgers.... But to each his own....

Call me old-fashioned, but when I purchase something, I like to pay for it once, not twice. And I like to know the price for what I'm buying, and not have to guess about it. It was those issues that took a bit of the shine off of an otherwise pleasant seafood dinner at the Seafood Market and Restaurant, located on Sukhumvit Soi 24 near the President Park Hotel.

From the outside, this restaurant looks almost like a hotel, with a huge and elaborate front driveway and entrance off the street, which appears sized to handle what I presume are many tour vans and buses that visit there. Inside is a very large but pleasant dining room, nicely decorated and filled with cloth tablecloth covered tables. There is a separate area for smokers and what appeared to be a very large wine shop on-site, though we didn't check out their wine selection. On the Friday night we visited, most of the customers were farang, along with a few Thais. At 10 pm, the dining room was less than half full. The restaurant's posted operating hours are 11:30 am to 11:30 pm, though we were told we needed to order before 11 pm. Service throughout the evening was very good, with plenty of waiters and wait staff on hand to promptly bring requested items, refill drinks, clear emptied plates and the like.

Forget choosing from a menu for your dinner here. Instead, there is a 50-meter long, ice-filled counter where all manner of fish and other seafood are on display, followed by similar counters filled with vegetables and fruits to accompany your meal -- most of those items marked with purchase prices of XX baht per kilo. You tell the accompanying waitress what quantities you want of what items, they are then bagged and placed into a supermarket shopping cart. After weighing them and paying for them (the first of two checks you'll pay for the evening), the ingredients for your dinner are literally wheeled to your table, where you talk with your waiter about how you want the various items cooked and prepared.

At that point, you've paid for the raw ingredients by weight. But at the end of the evening, you'll get a second check covering the separate cooking charges for whatever you've ordered, along with charges for drinks and some sides such as steamed rice and even the obligatory cold towels. For a reasonable dinner for two, our bill came to about 1,700 baht: about 1,000 for the seafood and vegetables for our meal, about 350 baht in cooking charges and another 290 baht for two large Asahi beers.

I know the cooking charge scheme is one used at other similar seafood shops, but it's a practice that rubs me the wrong way. And even though the restaurant has a clearly marked cooking prices list on each tables (a list showing higher prices that what we were actually charged), we weren't sure exactly what our cooking charges would be until the final second bill arrived. For example, my GF ordered a plate of Japanese style spring rolls from a counter with sushi and similar Japanese style offerings. The spring rolls were not charged in our original food bill, but did appear on the second bill simply as a 260 baht food item (and no apparent charge for cooking it).

I ordered a 550 baht seafood combination plate, which seemed like a great way to sample some of their different offerings, since it included a fish fillet, squid, prawns, crab. I chose to have the fish stir fried with black pepper, the squid sliced and deep fried, the prawns served with red curry sauce, and the crab prepared with yellow curry sauce. You might think the one combination plate would come with one cooking charge. But when the second, final bill arrived, there were four separate cooking charges of 60 baht each for the four different items in the combination plate, making it a bit less of a bargain. That said, however, all of the seafood we ate was very tasty and well prepared.

Depending on what you order here, you can either come away with a bargain, or empty your wallet. For example, we ordered a pot full of mussels steamed in butter sauce. The mussels themselves (145 baht per kilo) priced at 78 baht, along with a 60 baht cooking charge. For that price, I could eat mussels there until I die. At the other end, crabs priced at 1,975 baht per kilo, and lobster of course even higher. Oysters, for some reason, were priced differently at 35 baht per oyster.

There were a few other oddities that deserve some mention here. Despite their vast selection of seafood available, I found absolutely no salmon steaks on hand. And the waitress confirmed they had none, other than some raw salmon cut in slices in the Japanese section. I also saw no live fish tanks here for customers to choose a whole fish. Instead, all the fish appeared to be available only as cut fillets on the counter.

Lastly, when we first started to order our seafood, my taste buds were thinking about accompanying the seafood with a nice fresh salad of iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, onions and such. But, of course, they have no menu and no salad to order. So when I asked the waitress, her response was to grab a head of iceberg lettuce (150 baht per kilo), a couple of tomatoes (85 baht per kilo) and an onion (85 baht per kilo) and offer that they could all be diced into a salad. That was not exactly the approach I had in mind, so we took a pass on the salad, and instead had a plate of stir-fried asparagus (80 baht per bundle plus a 40 baht cooking charge).

Were I to go back again, I'd be wary of the combination plate with its four separate cooking charges. The mussels were great, very tender and tasty. And the fish counter had good selections of reasonably priced halibut and red snapper fillets. And if someone else was paying the bill, I might even try their King crab legs and lobster offerings.

The abovementioned PB and Penthouse hotels, in the vicinity of Suk Soi 11's back end, are widely used short-time hotels. Can't say I've ever known anyone who stayed there for any other purpose, including myself!

I believe the the airport line will interconnect with the BTS Sukhumvit line in one location and then the MRT subway system at another location -- but not directly with the BTS Silom line.

I believe the airport line originates near Phayathai, which has a BTS Sukhmumvit line station, and then continues out toward the airport with a station near Makasan, which is close to the MRT Rama IX station.

There's south of the border Mexican Mexican, and there's Tex-Mex, and there's California Mexican. I love them all, eat them all, and never argue one's better than the other.

Each has their own style, but they all flow from the same roots and share common elements, which make them good.

I was a lifelong Californian before moving here... But I love red chili sauce on my enchiladas (and that actually is a pretty common serving style in California Mexican places). Give me salsa fresca... give me pureed salsas.. red... orange... green... it's all good. Sour cream or no sour cream, I'll wolf 'em down...

Just give me the food here in Thailand, and I'm a happy man....

Any karaoke room recommendations in the same general vicinity???

I love to sing but never in public!

So get a private karaoke room, bring along some friends or folks you otherwise want to torture, and have at it...

It gets easier with practice... Add in a couple beers or other alcoholic beverage of your choice, and pretty soon, you're Frank Sinatra reincarnated...

I too pass along my thanks to JimmyD for the comprehensive and photo-illustrated review. It's those kinds of details that really help people decide whether a restaurant is someplace they want to try or not -- far more than simply tossing out "it sucked" or "it was a great place." Likewise, I always try to take the same approach with my own reviews of local restaurants, so stay tuned....

As one of our resident Mexican food fanatics, it's definitely at the top of my list to sample. I must sheepishly admit I'm behind the curve on this one, mainly because it's tough sometimes to get one's Thai female companions to willingly go along with Mexican food (since in general, they have absolutely no idea what Mexican food is).

Remember too, from a separate thread, that the owner of T&S supposedly was offering some kind of discount for Thai Visa members, though I'm not clear on the details and there was some kind of advance notice required. Maybe someone who's actually used the TV discount there can chime in here on if it's still running and how/when TV folks can access that.

Huntsman has three different kinds of seating configurations, if I recall correctly.

1. a rectangular central bar-tending area ringed by bar stools.

2. upholstered booths sized to accommodate 4 or 6 around the perimeter walls.

and 3. loose and moveable/arrangeable tables in between 1 and 2..., which would seem to fit best for accommodating any larger groups of folks.

In general, the Huntsman Pub is a very comfortable and low-key place for dining and drinking, and the Filipino band that's permanently stationed there serves up a good evening of mostly pop and mainstream farang hit songs.

Though without their Happy Hour specials or any other special accommodation, an evening of serious drinking at the Huntsman gets to be a bit pricey because the pub is still part of the rather pricey Landmark Hotel.

They've been running/advertising the regular Happy Hour specials for quite some time. But the mention above about the 2-for-1 Jack Daniels bottles and glasses (24/7) is one I've not heard of or seen advertised by them before.