Giin Thai Canteen

I really like this place. I discovered it while looking for Thai takeout as I was driving through Berkeley. With the snazzy Eat24 feature, I was able to order some food and pick it up 10 minutes later. Everything I’ve had here is good. The Thai BBQ chicken is tasty, as is the Pra Ram. Nothing is «knock your socks off» CRAZY good, but it’s quite satisfying for a quick lunch for ~ $ 10. There is sparse seating so this place functions best for take out. There is free parking right outside but getting a spot can be hit or miss.

Yuck. They overcharged me. Gave me the wrong food. And didn’t have half the items they claim to serve as specials. Very little flavor and wilty food. $ 20 into the garbage. Drive a little further if you want decent Thai.

Sad to say that this was the worst Thai food I have had in the bay, if you can even call it Thai food. I had Giin Thai bookmarked for quite sometime before stepping in here last week. My babe and I were famished and looking for nourishment. I almost headed to Thai Noodle but said to myself, hey why not try out a new place. So I found Giin Thai in my bookmarks and headed on over. Once we get there the place was smaller than I imagined. The woman working the counter was snappy towards me, rushing me to make my decision. I went with the special curry of the day, green curry. My babe ordered the red curry with chicken and we also grabbed a Thai ice tea. The drink was actually good, and had a great ration of half n half and tea. The food came out and we went up to go get it. At first glance I was shocked that they put the side salad IN the curry! Making it wilted, hot and just nasty. Plus I believe it was a ranch dressing? Which made no sense at all. The rice was also in the same bowl as everything else, soaking up all the curry sauce. The green curry itself was horrible and borderline inedible. The red curry WAS inedible, they used so much curry paste my babe could not even eat it. Plus they used store bough curry paste and WAAAY TOO MUCH of it
(think heavy on the Maeploy)!
Very disappointed and we both left hungry with a stomachache. Not wanting to waste his food we took it home, strained it, added coconut milk to make it edible and it was still too hot, and we both love heat!
Will not be coming back and highly DO NOT recommend. Service was bad and the employees seemed to not care about their jobs. The place had an overall dirty feel, table we ate on was so wobbly one hand had to hold it while eating! Not worth the dollar difference at all. So many better options for actual Thai food in the bay, skip this place!

The first two times I ate here I really liked it but my last three orders have been really bad. I don’t know if the chef changed or something but the food went from being very good to horrible very quickly. Please fix whatever you did!

Had takeout papaya salad from here. It was very tasty — a good balance of flavors and very large portion. Excited to go back and try more.

I’m so glad I stumbled in here. This is now one of my new favorite local haunts, but fair warning the food is spicy. (I love spicy!) I ordered the green curry which was fantastic, thai iced tea was good (though strong) and green papaya salad was on point (though also spicy). Top it all off with sticky rice and mango, all really great dishes. I’ll be back!

Came here and picked up Pad se ew and yellow curry, just to see how they compare with other Thai places. The prices are reasonable, but the portions are small. The food was okay, but didn’t really stand out. I prefer to get my thai food to go from Ghetto Asian (Thai Basil) in Berkeley as the portions are bigger and the taste just as good or better. I wanted to like this place and be a frequent customer, but that is not happening.

In Thailand this would be a street stall. Here in Oakland it’s a neat street café that serves straight-​up Thai Momma cooking. You can literally walk up to the counter, and watch them cook up your food on the burners in the back. A few casual, brightly colored benches are set up for in-​house diners (and you bus your own dishes back).
I stopped here straight off a plane from the East Coast with a ravenous appetite, on the recommendation of my airbnb host whose place I was heading to in the neighborhood. She is a chef herself so I trusted her judgment.
I had a full plate of coconut and chilli pad thai that was certainly satisfying as a sizeable lunch meal for around $ 8. It had four good-​sized shrimp and fried tofu chunks in addition to the traditional egg scrambled into the noodles. The lime was half-​powdered with chilli powder – an authentic nice touch. I piled on extra chilli condiments at the counter, got my fork, and dug in. The meal was rich in flavor in a street-​food, wok-​prepared kind of way. I enjoyed it (well, I was hungry)! I was glad to have my sweet Thai iced tea (using an exquisitely flavored black tea). I needed it to cut the heat!
While I was there, a few people sauntered in and made choices like «Thai tea but with coconut milk please» and «Can you make me a spicy beef salad?» The house obliged. What a cool little hole in the wall.

I reallyyyyyyy REALLY wanted to like this place since it’s only two blocks from where I work and the food is decent. However, the last couple of times I’ve gone there, I’ve had issues. I once ordered spring rolls that cost me almost $ 10 to only be disappointed by the unauthentic taste and shortage of portion. I basically got two small chubby wrapped spring rolls, with coleslaw veges and fresh-​out-​of-​the-​pan hot tofu pieces.
The last time I went, I ordered their Mushroom eggplant basil dish, with chicken. When receiving my order, I noticed that the portion was a tad bit on the short side but assumed it was because of the huge bowl it was served in. After a couple of bites, I couldn’t find any mushrooms or bell peppers. I let the cashier know and apparently, they were out. Why would you serve the item when you don’t have all of the ingredients, and sell it for the same price of almost $ 10? Ridiculous. He told me he’ll comp me the next time I go back, but how is he going to keep track of that? Humph!

Came to this place starving and looking for ANY hearty fast food meal. My friend and I had just came off a flight and got off the BART stop looking for our Airbnb. We both didn’t eat much that day so were starting to get pretty cranky and wanted to find a quick meal on our way to the place.
ENVIRONMENT:
It’s a very small place. About maybe 10 tables or so with a counter on the side to sit at. You can grab condiments and free cups of water on the side. The people were patient in taking our orders. :)
FOOD: Pad Thai, Thai BBQ, and Thai Iced Tea.
Pad Thai — At first, I didn’t like the pad thai because it wasn’t as sweet as I usually would have liked it. However, I realized that it was still full of flavors and less sugar.
Thai BBQ Chicken w/​Sticky Rice– I really, really liked this one. The chicken was still really tender and the sticky rice had the perfect consistency :)
Thai Iced Tea: I love thai iced tea! Let’s just say my friend and I split it and he killed 80% of it –_​–
I can be a little cheap on paying for extra bags and so forth, I totally forgot about the charges on containers and bags here in SF. It was fine though: P
Also, I think it was 50 cents additional if you use credit card under $ 20. So, we just bought a thai iced tea.
Overall a great place to eat Thai food hidden in the East Bay!

My favorite place for Thai in the East Bay. Maybe in all of California. Reasonable prices, amazing food, and a just-​right ambience for a quick meal.
Heartily recommended for vegans and all other comers. Giin Thai is not to be missed!

Very good, very helpful while choosing what to eat. Very spicy but flavorful. Sticky rice was delicious too!

Crab fried rice is as fresh as it gets. Informal seating. A plus is stools near front window where ya can see ur vehicle. No parking tickets this way

The gist: Good quality, average portions, painless pick-​up
This place came to the neighborhood a while ago, and I’d been seeing pretty good reviews for it. I’m not really a take-​out/​pick-​up guy, so I hadn’t stopped by, but the laziness factor was going to play into my decision to come here at some point, and I’m glad it did.
I called about 10 minutes before they closed and was still able to put in an order for pick-​up. Rode my bike down and got the Pra Ram and Red Curry (both 8.26). The red curry spilled on the bike, but it ended up being fine (the plastic bag, man, a curse and a blessing).
There was a $ 20 min for card, which is fine, so I threw a thai iced tea into the mix.
The Grub: Definitely high quality. It had that back, deeper spice taste that I think of as being more authentic, but what do I know. The tofu was perfect in both dishes, and though it was a little spicier than I would’ve wanted, I’m sure that can be asked to be toned down.
The Pra Ram was a little more, curry-​esque, not so much a goopy peanut as a light panang. It was very good.
The red curry had a lot of awesome veggies — pumpkin, peppers, cabbage.
My only point of contention would be the portions. They just felt smaller, and the dinner comes with salad and rice, which is great, but I’d sacrifice them for more food.
That said, I easily made a lunch and dinner out of this by adding rice from home. And it was even better the next day, so there you go.
I don’t think I’ll be coming back here soon, but that’s just b/​c I don’t do take-​out. I’d gladly recommend it to friends or deliver from here if my friends wanted to stay in and play board games.

I’ve been here twice and both times impressed with the food — well executed and among the better examples of Thai cooking around the area.
The space is small, counter seating along the wall and two small tables out front if the weather is nice. It’s a no frills place and accordingly you get a nice meal for a relatively low price. They have several rice, noodle, and stir-​fry plates as regular choices and also a specials board, curry changes daily. I had the Pad Ga Prao which had a good amount of meat with the veggies and a really nice complex flavor with just enough heat to make you glad a cold beverage was at hand. Likewise the Pad Khee Mao noodles, my go to Thai noodle dish, was delicious and complemented nicely with a little chili paste on the side.
You can call ahead as well for take out. If you like Thai food, give this place a try for sure.

This place is a great addition to the neighborhood. Giin, thanks for coming, you’ve seriously improved our Lorin lifestyle.
These guys crank out food pretty quick. Pricing is cheap portions aren’t huge, but they are proper for the price/​quality. My household grabs food to go, but they do have under-​subscribed counters and tables. That means they have dine-​in space that is available– I have only been here for pick-​up 5:30 — 7:30 so that is for that window of time.

This is the closest thing to authentic Thai street food in all of the East Bay… You can get things here that you can’t find at other Thai restaurants. The major winner here for me is the Khao Man Gai. Boiled chicken with a chili ginger sauce, rice cooked in chicken broth, and clean, hot broth on the side. The only other place to get it this close would be in Portland (Nong’s Khao Man Gai)…so this was definitely a treat!
I’ve yet to do this, but supposedly you can order whatever it is that the family is saying that day. I hope to do that soon. Giin!

Finally a Thai restaurant that serves reasonably authentic Thai food. The atmosphere makes you want to order take out rather than dine in, but the food is worth it.
The pad thai wasn’t sickly sweet and gloppy like so many of the American versions seem to be.
They offer a «what we’re eating» option, which is similar to a chef’s special.
I’m waiting for the laab to make it on the «what we’re eating» list so I can taste how they do my favorite Thai dish.
Worth a visit if you are interested in experiencing real Thai food.

What I ate: Papaya salad, pad Thai with chicken
Visit date: June 9, 2014
First time? Yes.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t super pleased with this joint. Prices seemed reasonable, until you got your order and realized that the low prices were due to small portions. I would have been ok with that except that the food itself didn’t really deliver.
The flavors in the papaya salad just didn’t marinate well into the papaya. All the ingredients were there; it was just missing a good mortar and pestle mash.
The pad Thai also fell flat. The flavors felt disconnected and the chicken was not tender.
A few seats are available for dining in, but this place is primarily set up for to-​go orders. I could see this place doing well for a local work lunch crowd, but to me, it isn’t worth a trip out.

I first read about Giin Thai Canteen over three months ago in the article
on Berkeleyside. Organizing a trip down here was complicated at first because the opening hours were a bit unstable. (That’s what I was told by the fine folks at Gecko Gecko when I asked them one day whether I could have lunch at Giin Thai.) But I finally made it and am sure glad that I did. Simply put: the place is awesome!
I showed up with a Thai food-​craving companion one Wednesday at noon. There were only one or two other customers, so it was easy for us to find a seat and place our orders. During the 45 minutes that we were on the premises, lots of people wandered in to get food to go or to eat in.
I ordered the daily special curry, which was a massaman. Although it was listed on the menu as curry with chicken leg, the counterman asked me whether I wanted it with chicken or with tofu. There seem to be lots of vegetarian choices on the menu, although it’s conceivable to me that some of the vegetable dishes have been exposed to broths that are not vegetarian.
My friend had a catfish dish, which was another one of the daily specials. She had only good things to say about it, but I had enough food in my bowl that I declined a taste of the catfish.
According to the wikipedia page
, massaman curry is ranked either #1 or #10 in the «World’s 50 most delicious foods,» depending on who you ask. Already I’d have trouble ranking it against Perdition’s smoked chicken or Costco’s pistachio nuts. It doesn’t matter — my curry was wonderfully satisfying. I hope to return to this spot quite frequently.
As you probably know, but I didn’t, the neighborhood is increasingly hip. The restaurant is located more or less at ground zero for the Tuesday Berkeley farmers’ market. Come here for lunch on a Tuesday and you’ll be well placed for serious shopping when the market opens at 2PM. If easy closeby parking is an issue for you, you might want to come on another day of the week.