Birthday Meal at Thai Square, Covent Garden

The restaurant

My favorite food is Thai... Thai curries, Thai spiced fish and meat, Thai veggies, Thai everything! I love the fresh zingy flavours and the fact that you can absolutely stuff your face and still feel reasonably healthy!

So I was extremely pleased that my lovely fella took me to a Thai restaurant for my birthday Saturday night. We ordered far too much food and ate all of it, and I think my only real negative for the evening was where we were sitting... because the food was fantastic!

The picture above (taken from Thai Square website as I forgot my camera! http://thaisquareserver.co.uk/) doesn't really show how richly decorated the place is inside. And unfortunately, we couldn't really appreciate the decor from our seats either. We were sat right at the front of the restaurant, not the very first row of tables so you're sat next to the window, but the next row back kind of tucked away in a corner. This was mildly frustrating as we booked way in advance, knowing it was a Sat night in London, and we were hoping to be right in the middle of all the atmosphere towards the back of the restaurant. But hey, we stopped caring as soon as we had a glass of white wine and Singha beer in front of us!

The Food

We always always have the sharing platter if there's an option; both love to taste a few different things for a starter/ can never pick which dish we want to try more! I can honestly say that this was the best Thai sharing platter I've ever had... the chicken satay was rich in flavour with the right amount of crunch; the Thai fish cakes were flavourful yet delicate... and just yummy; the duck spring rolls had a beautifully crispy filo pastry with plenty of stuff in the middle; the prawn tempura was so juicy with the lightest batter... probably my favorite one of this dish; and the Thai Dim Sum dissolved into flavour in my mouth. So off to a fantastic start, I wish I had a photo for you! The only thing that it was maybe missing was a funky shaped carrot so I could mop up the different sauces!!

For mains we had a monk fish green curry from the chefs specials, which was delicious. I very often go for a green curry and every time after ordering I think 'damn it I should have had something different'. And then it comes and the taste is just that good, that I know I'll order it again next time! Having monk fish was a special treat though, and it was seriously good, flake in the mouth stuff!

We also had beef Pad Kee Mao - spicy noodles... And damn they were spicy!! It does warn on the menu and normally we're both pretty good with hot flavours, but wow, I think we over estimated our love for hot food here. We both continued to eat it and the beef was delicious, but there were several rather large chunks of chilli that were blow your head off hot, and kind of stole away from the other flavours. Definitely did not ruin the meal though, and gave us quite a giggle at how bad we were at picking dishes!

We picked very well for our third and final main course dish, however... a dish they call Drunken Duck (battered marinated duck topped with home-made special whiskey sauce). It was unbelievably good - a teeny bit fatty as would be expected from duck, but the crunch of the batter was enough to keep the texture from feeling stodgy. But the flavour... oh the flavour... it somehow reminded me of American food, but only the stuff we love about American food, and having the fresh, zingy flavours of Thai food stopped it from being, well, y'know... American! There was something very satisfying about the mixture of traditional Thai green curry and this dish, that I wouldn't have immediately recognised as Thai, but that was quite simply, yummy!!!

So after all of that, we were just too full for any dessert and had to waddle back home. It was a lovely meal, slight shame about the setting, but I'd certainly go back. The menu was vast and had a load of other dishes I'd love to try, like the chef special Goong Fai Dang (Prawns with Whiskey) and some of their salads, so a definite one for the future. There are also several Thai Square retaurants dotted about London, so maybe next time I'll try a different one to mix it up!