The evening was a cool relaxing evening served with quality mildly spicy food at a reasonable price.
Purple Haze Thai Restaurant is a tucked away Workers Stadium area establishment that is guaranteed to be busy every night. True to its namesake, the purple décor surrounds diners in a cozy yet chic motif, providing a much needed sanctuary to fall into large plush chairs yet still feel trendy and ‘seen’.
Thai food in China... is it a necessity, waste of time, or eh, maybe? Lantung gives you that answer straight away. People will say that there are many great Thai restaurants in Beijing; ignore them for Lantung is the only restaurant you want to eat at. It is the only place where every dish is a Wow.
The Face Bar/La Na Thai complex looks exotic and bright in the early afternoon and I am excitedly waiting for a return in the evening hours when the intimate, seductive vibe and artfully decorated plaza takes on a life of its own.
Golden Thai is a funky setting with great ambience and friendly staff that makes the ¥100 plus per person price tag and out-of-the-way location worth the trip.
The Melting Pot – an authentic Thai restaurant led by native Thai Head Chef, Alyssa Han Pongpandh, will neither disappoint Thai food lovers nor burn a hole in your pocket. Enjoy these authentic delights in the French Concession district.
The Melting Pot serves its Thai cuisine competitors a large slice of humble pie. The competition only deserves it, because they are, as reflected in price, establishments that pay more attention to trendy décor and stylish presentation rather than pure taste. The Melting Pot on the other hand, has found a niche of authenticity deserving of praise.
It was an unbearably hot summer’s day and my taxi driver had just annoyed me immensely. Only after much protest did the air conditioning come on and absolutely no effort was made to help me locate this hard-to-find restaurant – a converted school building hidden near the south gate of the Worker’s Stadium. When I arrive at Face I was flustered, half an hour late and drenched in sweat.
The summer is hot in Shanghai, but is worse in Beijing. Chinese people often sleep on bamboo mats in the summer to keep cool. There are different kinds of mats, some with long strips of bamboo tied in parallel, some woven and some with thick tiles of bamboo, bound like a matrix of mahjong pieces. The last one keeps you coolest but because it doesn’t distribute your weight so evenly, the tiles angle towards your skin and stick to you as you roll backwards and forwards on a hot night, lying broad waking.
In the narrow, close-knit alleyways, under the stylized stone shikumen archways another niche was recently ‘carved’ into the funky, yet traditional, hip, yet authentic community that makes up Tai Kong Lu, Lapis Thai.
Lapis Lazuli in Pudong is actually two different restaurants, high end western on floor two and Thai on floor three. I am generally wary of this combination “one name brand, two separate restaurants.” It usually confuses diners looking for a meal, and dilutes an otherwise perfectly good restaurant brand. Lapis Lazuli only serves to confirm these fears.
Thai, Thai, Thai… It seems that by some default I have become the “Thai Guy”, the first port of call when this site needs a reviewer for a Thai restaurant. I’m definitely not complaining, I love Thai food, especially good Thai food and The Royal Thai Kitchen provided that.