Thai Curry House
Thai Curry House 38 Bonham Strand Sheung Wan Hong Kong Tel 2850 6380
Grub: Mostly Thai, but there are a number of Malay/Singaporean dishes on the menu.
Vibe: It's quite a large restaurant, with rather plain, but functional, decor. The walls are white with a few wood carvings for decoration. The staff are friendly and the service is prompt.
The restaurant is busy as lunchtime, as it is popular with office staff working nearby, but in the evenings it is much quieter.
Who to bring: Organise a class party. Small tables can be joined together to make bigger ones and there is enough room to move around if there are a lot of you.
What's hot: Thai Curry House has a much more restrained approach to chillies than most other Thai restaurants. While this may disappoint most fans of the cuisine, it's good news for people who can't normally enjoy som tam or green chicken curry. For those who simply must have the chilli, it can be added later.
Other than that, the menu holds no real surprises; all the classic dishes are represented. For starters, there are shrimp cakes, fish cakes and chicken in pandanus leaves. The tom yam soup, either with prawns or seafood, is one of the few dishes that the menu insists is still spicy.
The salads all have a single chilli icon to denote their level of spiciness. Despite this, the prawn with dragon fruit salad was not at all spicy. It was, in fact, very fresh and tangy, with its combination of kiwi, apples and grapes almost outplaying the dragon fruit. As a whole, though, they worked very well together and complemented the prawn brilliantly.
Another intriguing dish was the grilled eggplant which is served with a deliciously tart tamarind sauce. The sauce did have a spicy kick to it but as you add it yourself, you can add as much or as little as you choose.
The green chicken curry is served with slices of chilli that have been added to the sauce after cooking. This appears to be mostly for colour since the sauce itself has a sweet coconutty flavour without any trace of spiciness.
There were a number of desserts to choose from, including favourites such as sago cake with coconut cream and mango with sticky rice ; sadly, the Thai style lychee jelly was sold out, as were a number of others.
What's not: Despite having half a dozen desserts listed on the menu, there were only two desserts available on the day I visited. Your luck will hopefully be better.
Cost: A starter, main, dessert and drink is around HK$200 per head.
