Sookjai Thai Restaurant

The pad thai gai and nua phad bai graprow were delicious. We finished with coconut ice cream drizzled with honey, and then after being an avid Unilocal user but not reviewer, I was inspired to write this review. The server was lovely and personable during a busy Friday night. Highly recommend!

Single handedly the best Thai place in Victoria. Always delicious. The peanut sauce is to die for.

I’ve been to every Thai restaurant in Victoria, and this is undoubtedly my favourite. The coconut rice will blow your mind and the Pad Thai is the best in the city. The noodles are always the perfect consistency and the sauce is rich and delicious. The ingredients are extremely high quality in all the dishes, including meat, which is often a lagging point in other Thai spots in town (like Baan Thai).

I love this place. I’ve been coming here for the past 6 years mostly for lunches combos. I’ve tried few Thai restaurants in Victoria and u think this the best

Really good food. My family and I love Thai food and have been to a lot of different restaurants in a lot of different cities and this was memorable. Service was excellent and the food was delicious. The majority of my family ordered mild food and some ordered medium to spicy and we all pleased with the level of spice they received. The leftovers were delicious as well.

Just came back to Sookjai after a long break, unfortunately it has gone downhill since our last visit! The gang gai tasted flavourless, it was missing bamboo shoots, and tasted like it was thickened with flour. Such a disappointment for how good it once was.

We decided to give this place a try and went on a Thursday evening. The staff were friendly, helpful and quick. We ordered an appetizer and 2 entrees with some coconut rice.
The appetizer was a bowl of very dry ground chicken with some corn mixed in and some little pastries cups provided for us to spoon in the filling and pour some sweet sauce over. Not recommended.
The Thai spiced BBQ chicken was bland and dry. Also not recommended.
The ginger chicken was better but ordinary.
The coconut rice was excellent.
We will probably not return, but our experience could be tied to our selections. We saw other things pass by to other customers that looked appetizing.

Ordered from Sookjai recently and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of every dish. Perhaps my previous lunch visit was an off day or just different preparations than they have now but either way, we ordered 2 appies and 3 mains and the flavour and freshness were solid on all of them. The satay appetizer was really tasty.

I don’t understand why this place has an average of 3 stars. I thought it was great — from the food, to the portions (expect to have leftover unless you share a meal) to the very friendly service. And I, too, have been to Thailand and can tell you that this is the real deal. Will definitely go back on my next visit to Victoria.

Randomly stopped by for some great Thai for fisrt time in Victoria and it turned out to be a thursday nightmare
Price for the food i paid for chould have been a much more wonderful meal at another thai place, looking to the portion i got and it tasted really bad. I used to live in Thailand for years and there was not a second of hesistate that i wanted to change the place. Their Pad Se Ew was made with thin noodle and weird looking components. Well it could have been forgiven if they were trying to be «unique» and «different» with their thin noodle pad se ew, not wide rice noodle but Kee Mao Fried rice is totally unforgiveable. It’s tasteless and far from authentic thai. im totally not going back for it.
The food took 40 minutes to wait. There were only few tables in the restaurant and no line before my take out order. The worst of the case was a incredibly horrible service from a staff on that night. No greets, no thank you, no food handling to the customer. I was sitting the last 10 minutes without no one telling the food was ready and it was sitting right on counter without no one caring about. I had to ask for it and walk to grab it by myself and left the restaurant to had my disapponted meal.
Food is disappointed comparing to nice décor.
It took too long and terrible service staff. What else would you not ask for?
One star is too much seriously

I walked by this restaurant a million times and always wanted to try because it looks cute and they have some nice Southeast Asian & Thai décor.
After living in Thailand for years the food here was a real disappointment. I wanted to question if the cooks were trained in western style Chinese food and not Thai.
We ordered:
Tom Yum Goong — tasted fresh out of a package. In its defence there were quite a few prawns and the mushrooms were cooked well. Missing lemongrass flavour.
Pad Kraprow Gai — which was like a chinese stir fry chicken with broccoli, onion, carrot and a few basil leaves thrown in. Not even remotely looking like or tasting like Pad Kraprow.
Pad See-​Ew — made with skinny rice noodles? Seriously? It also had some kind of of weird glutinous sauce. It did not resemble Pad See-​Ew at all.
This place is often packed, but be warned if you know anything about Thai food, it won’t cut it.
*No stars — but since I can’t save my review without entering something, it gets the lowest Unilocal rating.

Nice place in terms of atmosphere and service, but the food is merely mediocre. A creative chef’s attentions are sorely wanting.

Best Thai food in Victoria. Maybe it just took me eating at the other two over-​hyped Thai restaurants in downtown Victoria to realize that Sookjai was by far the best in town.
Fun fact: «Sookjai» means «Don’t worry, be happy» in Thai, and this is exactly how you’ll feel here
FOOD:
+ Chicken satay: actually grilled and fit the bill compared to other dtown Victoria competitors
+ Penang curry: a red curry with chicken as the protein by default. We chose a medium spice level and it was absolutely delicious. The freshness of the ingredients will really pop out at you
+ Pad thai: ah, the quintessential Thai dish (at least to non-​Thai people), was the bellwether that we measured Sookjai against Siam Thai and Baan Thai. The pad thai was perfect — chewy noodles, not oversauced, healthy apportionment of the veggies, prawns were fresh and not gamy at all good spice
+ Fried rice: fried rice is fried rice, delicious nonetheless, and exemplary with the penang curry
+ Thai iced tea: they blend their tea with ice cubes to create a slurpee of sorts. I like this method because it prevents the tea from seeming to sweet or too thick
OTHER:
+ Service: there was only one waitress working, but she was able to handle our order and food without problem or hesitation
+ Ambiance: the restaurant has much nicer furnishings than Siam Thai or Baan Thai, but still has that eclectic touch of random wall hangings and 60s/​70s music playing. It’s a dim, small space, but very comfortable
+ Cleanliness: the restaurant is very clean, and there is no worker mopping the floor while you eat causing you to inhale bleach fumes (*cough* Siam Thai *cough*)
I highly recommend coming to Sookjai with a date or a friend just to get a solid, quality Thai meal. Anything less and you’ll be sad face

Sookjai’s my boyfriend’s favourite thai place in Victoria, and I make it a habit every now and then to surprise him at home with some takeout from here. They’re always fast with friendly and efficient service– even at busy times, I can get delicious food from here within 15 minutes to go. The décor is authentically thai and lovely, and the atmosphere’s accordingly pleasant.
Here’s a caveat about my review though: since my boyfriend’s a vegetarian, I’ve only ever had the veggie dishes here. But what I have had has been wonderful, and I especially love the red curry with bamboo shoots and peppers ($ 13, I believe)– the veggie version has yummy tofu, but there’s a version with chicken if you’d like some meat. Portions are large, and it’s a great value for your money. They’ve a full bar, with beer on tap. I have no idea how they fit so much goodness into this small place.
Oh, and as Christine C., says, the coconut rice is delicious!

This restaurant is small and very clean. We wandered in at 8:45 at night after finding that the restaurant we meant to go to closed at 8:30 on a Friday night! This was a great accidental second choice and they seated and served us despite closing themselves at 9:30.
We ordered a Thai Caesar which was pleasantly spicy but not burning as well as a cold Singha. We started with Chicken Satay which arrived quickly and warm, well cooked and with very well made peanut sauce and a small cucumber salad. We gobbled them down quickly and just in time for our main dish to arrive. We ordered a plate of Pad Thai with Chicken to share and it was more than enough food for two very hungry tourists! The noodles were soft and but not mushy and the dish was well accented with chicken, tofu and egg. The sauce was nice and not overpowering. I asked for hot sauce on the side as I LOVE thai food crazy hot and was very pleased when 3 choices were brought to my table: chilis in a vinegar sort of sauce, chilis in fish sauce, and chili sauce. I tried a bit of each and settled on the very spicy chili sauce as a favorite for this dish.
We finished our food with a good serving left over, packaged it up, and left the restaurant very satisfied. Total cost: 34 $ including tip.

Very flavorful. Good service. They willingly customized my order.