Thai Thai

Have eaten here for a big family lunch including grandparents (group of 12) using a toptable 50% discount offer which they are currently running till 7 July 2012. You have to order a starter and main course for each diner and in exchange it is half price. 24 dishes so we did a good sampling of the menu. I get the feeling that most diners are there on some sort of deal - its always busy whenever I wander by which is frequently. Despite the good reviews I think the food here is ordinary at best - bland and the batter fried dishes were frankly poor - takes a lot for the kids to turn their noses up at deep fried soft shell crab or squid - but they did. Curries too sweet, not enough heat. I wouldn't go back despite the cheapness - maybe its just me but i really cannot recommend a single Thai restaurant in Shoreditch and the includes Busaba Eathai and Yelo ...guess I must be fussy.....

I've been here a few times and I really enjoyed the food.
The thai ice-tea was delicious.. Would come back here no doubt!

I'm still on the hunt for a Thai takeaway that tastes like Busaba. I think I'll be hunting for a while, but this is the best one I've had recently.

One red beef curry, one green beef curry and rices and a scallops dish was £27, which isn't cheap in the slightest (I still don't understand why Thai food is so pricey, but I kid myself that it's healthier than Chinese), but it was really really tasty. It didn't taste of nothing but MSG.

The scallops dish was weird. They were fried in batter but then in a liquid-y sauce which made that go a bit soggy. Would have been much better without the sauce and £8.95 is pricey even for scallops.

Still, even with that issue it's a great little takeaway. We got delivery so I have no idea what it's like inside. But I'll order from them again.

Absolutely love this place! Thai Thai East has great hospital employees who are very friendly. If its busy can be a wait for your courses but worth the wait! Thai green curry is delicious. They do lovely sauces too

Thai Thai -East was a nicely laid-out restaurant, pleasant service and enjoyable food (but curries slightly too sweet for our tastes though).

I get takeaway from here, red curries or penangs. Perfectly acceptable.

Went here with a couple of friends using a 25% off Gourmet Society offer and enjoyed it although it was nothing out of the ordinary.

The decor was lovely with authentic glasswork, wooden carvings and big windows giving a light and spacious feel and the service was friendly and attentive.

Our Singapore Slings while we were deciding what to order were fruity, helped by the blackberry on top and with a decent kick.

Starters of Crab, Prawns and "golden chicken parcels" were pretty good. The chicken could have had more spice for me and the Crab was described as "a bit like KFC", although I'm not sure that was entirely an insult...
The enormous prawns were tender with perfectly done breadcrumbs and a melt in the mouth texture - definite winner, although probably leave the edible basket if you want to retain an appetite.

Mains were a prawn green curry, River prawns in pumpkin red curry and a garlic and pepper seabass.
The Green curry had a good flavour without being overpowering (although personally i prefer a bit more chilli kick) but it was lacking the small pea-aubergines.

The pumpkin was nice although perhaps had a little too much bite to it and the butterflied River Prawns were tasty to begin with but had a slightly charred flavour and were very meaty which left us unable to finish them

The seabass was nice if a little bit bland.

Overall, it was a good meal without being outstanding, perhaps I've become too accustomed to Thai food because it's hard to be blown away by it these days but it was enjoyable none the less.

It's location near Old Street is a plus though.

Went here on a free Toptable meal. To start I ordered the tom yam gai (described on the menu as "The famous Thai spicy and sour chicken with lemon grass and fresh herbs soup"). The chicken in my soup was incredibly tender - often you get overcooked chicken in soups, but this tasted like it had been delicately poached and then added to the soup for serving. For the main I chose phad ke moe chicken, which is "stir fried flat rice noodles with holy basil leaves and chili" - it came packed with more chicken and veggies than noodles. Man, they were not kidding about the chili. The menu has two red chilies next to this dish, which means it is hot, but it was really making my whole mouth numb.

Book if you want to go here it was rammed at 7pm on a sun night. Let's start with the positives. The decor is lovely and the service is smiley and efficient. We ordered on the tptable 50% offer, bear in mind that you need to order a starter and main each on this deal which is more food than I wanted. The starters of thai fishcakes and duck spring rolls tasted fresh and were filled with meat rather than cheap filler such as beansprouts. Sadly it went a bit downhill from there. The curries all tasted a bit sickly sweet as though they had been finished with pure sugar. Normally I love the balance between sweet, sour, hot and salty in thai food but here everything just tasted sweet, so much so that I felt a bit ill after eating it. We ordered 5 different curries so I don't think this was bad luck or bad ordering. I would probably wouldn't go back.

Just a stone’s throw away from Old Street Tube station, Thai Thai East is conveniently located on the Old Street, and hard to miss.

The interior decor is interestingly vibrant, and reminds me a little of Thai Square, altho with less of the pomp.

Our group of six diners ordered A LOT of food for this meal. It was a farewell dinner for one of our friends who was visiting from abroad, and we were all hungry.

Sadly, I cannot rave about most of the dishes at this restaurant:

Starters

The Thai Thai Platter is great for sharing, and decent enough in taste, but hardly impressive (if you’re a cynic like me, you’d know you can get these frozen from Wing Yip and they’d taste exactly the same, if not better).

Thai salads like Som Tham (papaya salad) were bland and a huge disappointment - rather pricey, if you think about how bland it tastes! The Larb (minced chicken salad) was decent, and by far the best salad dish available. Don’t bother ordering the seafood salad - it’s practically the worst I’ve ever had, with no hint of vermicelli whatsoever, and a strong overdose of onions. They’ve got the equation all wrong!

Soup

We ordered the Po-Tak (min for 2), which was well presented in a little steamboat with a flame under it, to keep the soup warm. Although the portions says it’s “for 2”, do not be deceived - we could not finish it, even though there were 6 of us!

It’s not a bad soup.. much like Tom Yum, but truly.. it is quite bland. We all agreed we’d had much better elsewhere. But if you want to order “group soup”, then this is probably the most economical way to do it.. (£10.95) and you’ll have left-overs, rather than order individual portions at £4.95.

We ordered quite a selection of main courses since we were all hungry, and curious to sample what the restaurant had to offer.

Beef: Sau Rong Hai (Weeping Tiger), a grilled beef dish is supposed to be moist and tender, but this came out dry and tough.

Duck:
We ordered one duck dish which also turned out rather dry and tough, and portions were small.

Green Curry:

It’s almost impossible to go wrong with green curry.. so, we ordered a Chicken Green Curry.. nice enough, but again, no wow factor there. As expected, it was decent.

Seafood:

However, I’d highly recommend ordering the red curry River Prawns, as the prawns are huge and succulent (forget ordinary prawns.. you seldom get prawns this big in other restaurants!)...

Fish dishes were very good - we order Choo Chee sea bass (funnily enough, all their fish dishes were sea bass), and another steamed fish with lime & spicy sauce (this was excellent, and by far the best dish).

Phad Thai:

If you love Phad Thai, then I strongly recommend you order it at this restaurant - it has got to be the best Phad Thai I’ve had in a long while - the noodles are moist yet not soggy, and the flavours are just right. Most restaurants do their Phad Thai too dry, and the noodles tend to stick together… else, they’re too soggy. I’d go back to this restaurant just for the Phad Thai, but probably nothing else..

Prices are not cheap at Thai Thai East - we managed to get a deal on Toptable which gave us 50% off for food, but that does not include drinks or desserts, and these can severely add on to your bill, even if you’re a non-alcoholic drinker.

In the end, we paid £21 each for the meal, which, without the Top Table offer would have probably come closer to £35 each. Not exactly good quality for such a meal…

I will not be rushing back to Thai Thai East, not unless someone organized a dinner get-together, but even then.. I’d be reluctant to spend my money there. There are better Thai restaurants out there which won’t cost you an arm and a leg for very mediocre food.

I took the opportunity to use some of my toptable points at the Thai Thai East, which made it a very cheap evening, having said that looking at the menu the value for money would have been good even if paying for it. As for the food itself, the two dishes I had were good, the green curry was very nice, although the salad on the side was more of an after thought and not the freshest I have ever seen, but that is forgivable as the curry was the thing I was eating.

The decor was what I imagined would be quite Thai and interesting and although I was there very early on a Tuesday, I can imagine that it would be quite a good place for a group of friends a little later in the evening.