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Sala Thai has two locations, one downtown and one on Cambie Street.
Tried this place for the first time because of a VanEats coupon. Glad we did. The menu was very adequate and very tasty. Always like the VanEats deals they put together. The food is just as they present it. The flavours of all the food was delicious. Service was very good. Our water glasses were constantly being refilled for us and the dishes came out at a very good pace. Our server "lin"was most gracious. Great overall experience.
Came here on a weeknight as it's near the theatres. Ordered a few dishes - Papaya salad - good but really small, Angel Wings - boneless stuffed chicken wings - good but only 2, Pad Thai - their signature version, very good, Green Curry - lots of meat and veggies, Penang Beef Curry - good level of spice, very good. The service was good with lots of people working. Ambiance is a bit too touristy with a rickshaw and couple of out of place decorations on the wall. It's def geared towards the out of town visitors. Food is good but not for the price they are charging as there are many other restaurants that have just as good food for a better price.
Every time our table wanted any service once we sat down (get water, order, refill our water, pack our food, get our bill) we had to flag a server down. Once the server arrived (we had many) they all seemed very friendly. Of course we were never asked how the food was. Our pad thai, red curry chicken, beef broccoli, mixed vegetables were all very good. Prices were standard - $10 - 13 per dish. I noticed all the other tables received the same treatment. I would definitely go back if the service improved because it is a great location and decor. For now, there are many other Thai food places to choose from that also have good food and service.
In one word - awesome. Great food, great service (can a bit slow at lunch sometimes), and very reasonably priced (not sure what the other reviewer found so expensive). I have lunch here at least once a week; it's a bit of a walk from my office, but well worth it. The lunch deals are well-priced - under $10 for a decent lunch; not sure where else in downtown Vancouver one can get a decent, sit-down, served lunch for under that. My favourite is the drunken seafood - spicy and just right.
We were a party of 6 and made reservations for lunch this week. Their lunch special for that day was the Thai red curry with chicken, spring rolls, and soup. It sounded pretty good, so that's what the majority of us ordered. Soon after, the soup arrived and it was something similar to Tom Yam soup. I felt that the lemongrass was a bit overwhelming and there weren't too many ingredients in it so it was so-so. Anyway, it didn't take too long for the entree to be served (less than 15 min.) as we were getting hungry and needed to be fed. The presentation was nice and appetizing but as the rice and curry portions weren't too generous, adding the vegetarian spring roll and dipping sauce on the plate was good idea. For $10.99, I thought the price was a bit steep for a lunch special, but the curry was good. The service was okay and we had a good experience although I need to mention that they automatically charge a 15% gratuity. I would've preferred to tip based on the level of service provided during our experience. Don't you agree?
I have eaten a few times at Sala Thai, I leave full but felt they could have done more with my meal.
Service can be friendly, depending on the server, and if they're busy when you arrive.
I ordered the garlic chicken, steamed rice, steamed roll, and wish I got another dish with vegetables. The garlic chicken was full of garlic, and can still taste it, but I wished they added vegetables or bigger slices of chicken. Its not a large dish, the rice did help, and the steam rolls had lots of flavour. I find each time I eat here, the sizes of the dishes is what you're paying for, and if I wanted to order the additional dishes, this would be costly. I don't know if they do this, hoping you will order more, but I wish they had larger portion sizes.
Was just there tonight for dinner and have been there over 10 times for lunch. The service I thought was consistently friendly. As it was Sunday night, we got a table at 6 pm without any wait. Our water glass was always full. The 15% 'forced' gratuity mentioned in an earlier post was for a set dinner menu and they had put it in writing so was no surprise. We had their seafood special, salad and a curry dish and everything was awesome. The room is the nicest one can find in a Thai restaurant. Our server was friendly and checked on us throughout our dinner. A great place to have dinner before a movie night at Paramount.
The service was brisk, the food quality was good...overall an enjoyable lunch.
Honestly, I wouldn't come back here again. The atmosphere of the entire place was okay, but like a review before this, I found it a bit tourist-y as well.
The service was terrible. The waitress gave us attitude, and when I pointed out to the chicken in my pad thai (I'm a vegetarian) she flatly told me it wasn't without inspecting it, and said it was egg. I tried to reason with her but she walked away. I was sure that it was chicken, cause a friend of mine had their pad thai as well, but with chicken. I had to ask to speak to the manager.. who told me the chicken was tofu. So obviously neither one of them knew what was in my food. I had to get a new one. Even so, they STILL charged me for tips at the end. Their pad thai was gross, it was all stuck and gobbed together. Did not taste good. I tried their eggplant dish as well, pretty good. But does not make up for the pad thai.
Would never go back here again. Ugh. Still mad I even paid for the tip.
I went to Sala Thai with a group from work - about 30 people in total. We were seated in an area at the back of the restaurant, which suited our group just fine. We started off with some appies and I tried their Golden Angel Wings - which was boneless chicken wings stuffed with shrimp, meat, vegetable vermicelli noodle & herbs. Sounds much better than it tasted. It was kind of a weird flavour - deep friend and sliced, served with a chili oil sauce. I wouldn't recommend it, or order it again.
For my main, I had the Pa-Nang Tiger Prawns & Scallops, a thick red curry sauce with coconut cream, bell peppers & coconut meat. The flavour was good, but there was hardly any food there. It would only be enough to share if you had at least 2 dishes plus rice.
Basically, the food was ok - but the value isn't there. I'm used to much larger portions with Thai food, so I would go elsewhere next time I'm craving Thai. Actually, there WAS considerable value in their draft beer - they only have one kind though - Big Rock Traditional Ale. A huge pitcher will cost you only $14.99, so that was a plus.
Went there for lunch on a Sunday. It was quiet but I had to stand there for 2-3mins until someone noticed me. I ordered the Tom Kha soup and the lunch special (chicken skewer x2, rice spring roll x2, green salad and thai salad). The soup tasted ok, I've had better. I think there wasn't enough spices. There were lots of mushrooms and chicken. The special was ok also. The chicken was very marinated but kinda dry. The spring rolls were pretty good but I've never tried it w/ rice inside before. The thai salad was a little too tangy for me. I could barely finish half of it because it didn't meet my taste expectations. I was a little disappointed cuz I expected better since it's been in business for some time. I will not go again.
Waitresses are unenthusiastic--either ignore you or brush you off to another which usually defaults to the manager. So we realized he's the one to order from--even throws in some smiles. Pleasant enough. The women were there just for grunge work. From the satay to garlic beef, they were served cold and beef-jerky-dry. The pork satay was also served luke warm at best but everything else was near perfect. Here's my quarrel. Firstly, since one order of satay only has 4 servings, I ordered 2 of them. The options were beef/chicken/pork. The manager seemed strangely happy to inform me in a very curt "Nope. Can't do that." in response to my request for combining the 3 meats in the 2 orders (8 sticks total). Alright, I accepted that gracefully. Just had the beef and pork. Later, come time for dessert, I asked if they wouldn't mind swapping out the white sticky rice for the black one . I find that white sticky rice is too sweet even with it usually salted a bit & too heavy, not as good in complimenting the sweet mango. "No. Can't do that." I thought I heard wrong since he held a smile, so I repeated. All I got was again a VERY proud "Nope. Can't do that." He favourite phrase, obvious by now. It was originally an order for 2 mango desserts with sticky rice. I will never return here. Chili House/Club down by the waterfront on Beach Avenue, near C's, is a WHOLE lot better in variety offered, WHOLE steamed fish, plenty more specialty cocktails virgin and spiked to choose from. Though they seem to find it strange, but they're at least HAPPY to accomodate your requests. I'd understand if they don't have any black sticky rice in their kitchen. I never mind being charged extra for the changes if needs be. Places like Chao Praya actually serve that mango dish with BOTH black & white yinyang-style to their guests. Oooo, I hate that smirk of his. I'm sure he was laughing when they slapped on the 15% gratuity for large parties onto the bill so he has secured the tip.
I went to this restaurant on a weekday evening last week for dinner with 2 friends. It is close to the Scotiabank theatres in Downtown Vancouver. The inside of the restaurant looks significantly better than the outside. It was surprising that the inside looked so nice.
The waitress was very charming and she provided great service. Each of us had an alcoholic drink (approx $6-7 for daily special), and we then shared a coconut dish which was spicy, a mee goreng, an eggplant dish, and chicken satays (appetizer). We also had to order a jasmine rice as the dishes we had did not come with rice. The satays came out to $1.50-$2 a piece which is very expensive. The coconut dish, mee goreng and egg plant dishes were about $10-$15 each. The jasmine rice is about $1.75. Including tax and tap, our bill was about $30/person.
The food was quite tasty but the value was very poor given the portions.
Okay, excellent decor you really get some feel to thai luxury. Mannerable hostess and servers.
Value is not good value. Ordered pad thai, pork curry and rice. Pad thai was good, portion was alright but for the price, not great value. I understand it's a downtown restaurant with a hostess....and nice ambiance but the food here is just average midrange quality. The pork curry was terrible! It wasn't spicy at the least and we ordered spicy....we added in at least 2additional spoonfuls of the curry spice they provided on the side. The pork wasn't marinated so it wasn't tasty and it was quite chewy. The curry had this gross thick film of oil (curry oil? red oil) over the small bowl of curry. I despise small bowls of curry like it's a delicacy or something. It lacked spices and everything. The rice was whatever...it's rice. Not fragrant though if that's what you like.
Yup, that's what happened to me and my friend. We've been there a dozen times and never had this problem. Was their service bad? Not really. But I surely don't feel good about this forced tipping. Food as always is good.
I dined at Sala Thai with a small group of friends and we were very disappointed by the service we received. When we arrived there were very few people in the restaurant, but it took quite a while for someone to seat us at a table. Once seated we ordered our food shortly thereafter, but ended up having to wait a long time for our water glasses to be filled and well over 45 minutes for our food (we probably only received the food when we did because we had to ask our server when the food would be ready). Our server brought out a few meals before the others and the rice for everyone. The remaining meals were brought to the table after more waiting (this time about 10 minutes). By that time, the first meals were cold and so were all the side dishes of rice. The dining experience took so long that some of us weren't even able to eat at the restaurant and had to request takeaway containers immediately after receiving our meals. The food quality wasn't great either. In my case, I ordered vegetarian red curry with tofu and I received a very liquidy curry with no tofu and a very limited selection of vegetables (mostly carrot slices and only a few pieces of heartier vegetables like broccoli). What took the cake was the automatic 15% tip that was added to our bill. A sincere apology for the awful service we received would have been more welcome. We won't be going back to Sala Thai after this experience.
I put in an hour of coins thinking that would be plenty of time on the meter, but the waitress screwed us over. We should have walked out after sitting there waiting for our food for what was certainly more than half an hour. We were very hungry, driving back home from Whistler. She said there was a 'miscommunication' with the kitchen, meaning she forgot to submit our order. It took an hour and twenty minutes for a simple meal and I had no watch on and didn't realize it was so late the meter had run out. I've asked for this restaurant to pay for the parking ticket but they have not responded.
I have visited Sala Thai for a total of three times now for the last three years, all equally comparable experience.
Ambiance:
Traditional Thai design but in a "touristy" kind of way with over emphasized ethnic artifacts. Lighting was just right and although the restaurant was crowded and busy, my date and I still were seated comfortably
Food:
We ordered the $25 set menu which included an appetizer, three main courses and dessert. The tom yum gum soup was my favorite out of the three. The soup was rich in flavor with an ample serving of shrimp. For the main course, we ordered a stir fry vegetable with shrimp, pad thai, and chicken curry. Nothing special with the three and I've had better curry and pad thai at other establishments like Simply Thai in Yaletown. The dessert was a huge disappointment. We were expecting a serving of fried banana and ice cream, but instead we just received two very small scoops (about 2 full tablespoon round) of coconut ice cream that had a freezer burn taste and feel.
Service:
Decent service. Servers were proper and attentive even during busy hours.
Value:
Not a great value for what you get. If you want a quick Thai food fix , you pay for it. Kind of like an overpriced late night convenience store.
Pros: location, service
Cons: mediocre thai food compared to the price
I would recommend Simply Thai in Yaletown instead.
I suppose Sala Thai has gone the way of catering to tourist dollars rather than the regular local crowd. I mean there are many Restaurants downtown that cater to people visiting from out of town. I use to go to Sala Thai as it was close to home and served in my opinion pretty authentic Thai food. The staff and cooks are Thai themselves. They got some items that is uniquely Thai that I had not seen in other Thai restaurants in Vancouver like the catfish salad.
But I do agree that the quality has been slippping. The difference if you are going after a repeat local customer rather than a visiting tourist is significant. I think it is outrageous that you put a forced 15% gratutity especially for a set meal.
I do love the deep fried banana ice cream dessert along with the mouth watering thai salads. Would still go back but not so often. Sala Thai is sliding down on my list of fav Thai restaurant. Too bad no one cares.
I should have known better. Smack down in downtown, nice decor, ethnic food, jacked up price, perfect for tourists who don't know any better. Food was bland, service so so. Where are the spices? Think the cambie location is a bit better. If u want a south asian flavor i recommend banana leaf in Kits. Yeah i know it's malaysian (close enough) but way better food for the buck. Will never go back to salathai. You are better off finding a Thai friend and get his/her mom to cook homemade Thai for ya.
| 1. | 1100 W Eglinton (3350.6 km) |
| 1. | Winking Judge Pub, The (3 m) |  |
| 2. | Japa Dog (17 m) |  |
| 3. | Fleuri (18 m) | |
| 4. | Ensemble Tap (48 m) | |
| 5. | Don Francesco Ristorante (50 m) | |
| 6. | Pacifico Pizzeria & Ristorante (51 m) | |
| 7. | Burger King (52 m) | |
| 8. | Seattle's Best Coffee (52 m) | |
| 9. | Starbucks (61 m) | |
| 10. | Le Crocodile (71 m) |  |
