Thai Orchid

Kake, 18 Feb 2001

I've been here a fair number of times since I wrote the review below. The menu's changed slightly - they don't seem to have the tofu dishes any more, which is a big shame. My new recommended dish is the Thai sweet and sour - nothing at all like Chinese sweet and sour. I also like the side dish of stirfried vegetables with garlic and chilli. The Jungle Curry's gone downhill a bit - we had it last night and it's really nothing special.

Something to be wary of is that the Thai soup, despite being listed in the vegetarian starters, does have fish sauce added by default! I discovered this when an omnivore friend commented a few months ago that it tasted "fishy". Last night I asked the waitress before ordering and she said that it does have fish sauce in usually, but that this can be left out. We asked for this to be done, and my friend confirmed that the fishy taste had gone, so at least they weren't lying to us. I'll probably write to them about this.

Kake, 15 Jan 1999

This is a really beautiful place to eat in. There's a fishpond beside the door, and random sculptures of small elephants and things scattered around. I was a bit confused by the staff; they seemed rather abrupt when I arrived, but became a lot nicer later on, when the restaurant filled up. I'd have expected it to be the other way round...

There's a separate vegetarian menu with starters and main dishes, and all but one of the dishes (the one with egg explicitly mentioned) are vegan. The curry paste used does not contain shrimp; the stirfried noodles are rice noodles and contain no egg; and the batter is flour and water only. The stirfried noodles are really nice. The tofu is also well done; I recommend the tofu with mushrooms, and the tofu with green beans and red curry paste. None of it is horribly hot. The Jungle Curry is pleasantly warm, but really tasty, though it comes with rather a lot of liquid.

A starter each, plenty of steamed rice each, and 7 main course dishes between 8 people came to £10 per head, and this was enough food without being too much. Lager (Heineken) was £2·40 per pint, and coffee and Jasmine tea were each £1·50, though the coffee was just one cup, and we got buckets of tea.

I came here with the Oxford Vegetarians Dining-Out Club, and will definitely be going again very soon.

OS X co-ord: 452498     OS Y co-ord: 206066     (Latitude: 51.750372 Longitude: -1.239431)
Last edited 2007-04-04 04:37:09 (version 2; diff). List all versions.