Thai Spice Express

My mom loves to come here for 2 things. Their fried whole fish and their steamed? Boiled? fish.
Fried whole fish: (⁵⁄₅) always crispy and well cooked. The sauce is what makes this dish. I could use that sauce on everything, it’s that good!
Steamed/​boiled fish: (⁴⁄₅) the fish has a little broth that it sits in. It has your typical Thai, spicy snd sour flavor to it. The fish itself is pretty bland. I would prefer to dip the fish in the other sauce
Stir fried Spicy seafood: (²⁄₅) I think it was this item. I wanted more food so picked something else and was just disappointed. It was just pretty much green beans and few pieces of shrimp here and there.
Would I come back? Only for the first two items.

As a Thai searching for Thai food. So far, in Houston, there is no Thai restuarant that offers the variety, ingredients, and the taste as authentic as this place.

Very mediocre Thai food, not authentic at all. Service is meh. The fact that they charge you extra when I asked for no ice in my Thai tea was annoying. The lunch special is worth the trip though, less than $ 7 for three choices, rice and unlimited soup.

I don’t always eat Thai food, but when I do, I go to Thai Spice Express.
Best spot for mussels, Tom yum soup, and tiger cry. This is my go to spot for cheap authentic Thai food. Their dips are absolutely devine! If you can handle the heat, try their sauce for the mussels. I always like to get extra mussel sauce and eat it with their steamed fish.
You can’t get the mussel sauce and not try the sauce for the tiger cry! It’s the best! I’m a sauce kind of person so when the sauce is great, everything tastes amazing. The tiger cry looks like a flank steak that they grilled and cut it into about 8 – 10 strips. Sure it’s bland, but the dip makes it oh so yummy. Definitely try it out.
Tom yum soup… YUM! Im a firm believer in always trying out the tom yum soup when testing out a Thai restaurant. I love the aromatics that the lemon grass and galangal gives. It’s that extra OOMPH in the soup that makes it stand out so much more than other Thai joints.
Oh! Oh! Oh! Their Thai tea is BombDotCom. No joke.

I absolutely love this place. The food always comes out fresh and when I ask for it to be extra spicy, it does! I love everything I’ve gotten from the menu and I come at least twice a month since we only eat out every weekend. In my opinion, it’s pretty cheap compared to other places.
The staff is nice and very helpful.
I recommend this restaurant to everyone I know!

This is probably one of my favorite Thai restaurants for several reasons. I have consistently received flavorful, tasty dishes and they are directly between by work and my house. Actually, last week, I ordered out from here three times. I love their noodle dishes, eggplant, curry, veggie+meat, and their Pineapple Fried Rice is ridiculous. I’m not a fan of their whole fish, but I think that’s just a «I can’t handle the eyes looking at me» issue.
Is this totally authentic? I don’t know… I’m just a white girl. Does it delight my tastebuds? Hell yea. Is the service always the best? Nope. But I’m not going here for the fine dining experience. I’m here to eat some Thai food.
My favorite dishes: Pad Se Eaw, Pineapple Fried Rice, Sautéed Eggplant, Drunken Chicken, Bowl of Curry and Tom Kha.
Next, I need to try their cafeteria style lunch (real cheap and looks great, y’all).

Still one of my favorite Thai restaurants although one complaint would be it’s not clean or well kept. One time we saw a small roach under my husband’s plate and we ended up telling them there was a roach and we got up and left. Ended up coming back telling myself I will still come until the day I find one in my food I will not return. The reason why I return is because I love their fried fish and the spicy sauce the use with their mussels. The sauce is legit. I have yet to find another place with that sauce or the fish. The two together are delicious. I also love their ground beef and green beans and also their crystal clear noodle salad.

The baked fish with lemongrass and sour broth was tasty. Great price for an tasty dish. Would be great in cold weather when you got the cold. The spiced made my nose runny. Spicy but has a kick!

Highly disappointed. The food was bland and were unlike anything as shown in the menu!
The menu is completely misleading…
At first thought the place was good since there was a lot of customers in the building.
Comparing this restaurant to the restaurants I’ve tried, this restaurant has to be the worst in my mind. No flavor and no taste
If Unilocal had an option to rate a 0 then I’d give this restaurant no stars

If you’re wanting to satisfy a Thai taste, this is the spot. We had the muscles, fried fish, yellow curry, papaya salad, fried rice, pandan jello, mango sticky rice, Thai tea. I wasn’t feeling the papaya salad, but my husband did. It had a lot of fish sauce, but my husband liked it. Everything was delicious, service was great!

This Thai restaurant is just average. Prices are good, but the food was only okay.
You order at the counter, sit down, and the food will come to you. We didn’t do the express cafeteria style, just family-​style. We ordered the baked mussels, tom kha soup, pad thai, beef curry noodle, and the fried whole fish.
The baked mussels were good, and it came with a nice dipping sauce. Tom kha soup too sour for my taste; it had shrimp and mushrooms. Pad thai was pretty standard. Beef curry noodle also standard. The fried whole fish seemed to be the hype on Unilocal,and that’s why we ordered it, but it wasn’t that spectacular. However, I eat fish all the time because my dad fishes, and that… was just a fried tilapia. Lots of bones too, so you don’t get that much meat. Presentation left a lot to be desired (fried fish on a plate with sauce on side. At least add a lettuce??). The sauce for the fish was good; I think it was tamarind based?
All in all, the prices were affordable, but this isn’t a restaurant that I would be craving to come back to. They do sell some Thai prepared snacks and desserts by the front. We bought the mango sticky rice for $ 4, but it was only okay.

Got here on Monday around 12:30. Not packed, but in and outers. Got their lunch special which includes 3 sides, generous scoop of rice, and soup for $ 5.59 (+tax). They have about 8 options to choose from, including what appeared to be vegetarian and possibly vegan items, although you’d have to make sure there were no animal-​based broths or sauces used.
It’s not Jasmine rice that’s given, just plain white, which is okay I guess. For the sides, I got:
Spicy chicken curry (yellow/​red) — this was pretty standard and was good, nothing special but not spicy.
Egg and tofu — not sure what this was, it had some odd seasonings and was sweet. Wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t too into the tofu that soaked up all the really sweet sauce.
Veggie/​tofu stir fry — pretty standard, not frozen veggies so that’s a plus.
Soup — you get your own soup over on the side. It’s just plain cabbage and ground pork. There was a generous amount of cabbage and not just plain liquid, so if you’re looking to load up on your veggies, check what soup they have before you choose your sides.
All in all, I would come back for a quick and cheap lunch with variety. Or for takeout if I’m in the area. Portion is big. It’s comfort type food for a rainy Friday night.

This is what you need to know about TSE:
— It’s a restaurant where you can order family-​style Thai dishes
— They have an «Express» cafeteria-​esque line where you can eat a great meal for $ 5.50
The only times I come here is to eat Express with the Hubbs. Go to the right-​side where you can see a sneeze guard and about 10 – 12 items made in bulk. You get a large serving of rice, any three items you like and a small (and free refill) soup for $ 5.50. I mean, seriously, that’s a good deal. And it’s a lot of food! Then you walk to your left about 5 feet to pay. Sit down, eat and off you go!
Typical items they have are pork ribs, beef ribs, tofu and vegetables, red curry, bok choy, and other combinations of meat, vegetables or both. Their soup is a very simple vegetable/​cabbage soup with some spicy ground pork (?) and other chopped vegetables. Everything I’ve had so far is tasty and was more than enough to fill me up during the lunch rush.
I’ve actually never ordered anything from their normal menu, but there’s a fish that sits on a self-​heating pot that seems to be really popular. Maybe we’ll try that next time :)

My favorite Thai Restaraunt! Their crispy whole fish is soooo good. I can eat 1 – 2 of them bones, fins and all when I dip it in the sauce it comes with or the lime pepper fish sauce I get at the side bar. The Tom yum soup is salty but very very good. Their’s pad Thai, pad see aw are delicious! Curry is good… Basil snails are fat juicy and so tasty… Serving size is very decent. Service is fast. It’s not a fancy place. There’s a lunch cafeteria style side and free hot tea. There’s a side bar for free sauces. And a side bar for desserts and prepackaged snacks. Large place. I’ve been eating here for almost 20 years.

My friends spoke very highly of this place so when I finally came here, I was highly disappointed. First, it’s similar setting to a fast food place, you go up to the front and order first, they bring you your food, and you pay after, which doesn’t make sense to me. Second, the food was extremely mediocre… It definitely is spicy but there’s no flavor or taste really to it. The fried chicken was really tough that it was impossible to cut with a butter knife they give you. The beef and vegetable thing (not sure what it’s called because my friends ordered this) had no taste to it. The only semi-​good thing is the fish thing (not sure what this is called either) and I don’t even like fish. Overall, food is just meh, I would rather go to Thai Gourmet or Nidda Thai Cuisine. Price is decent, but not enough to make me want to go back.
What I ordered:
— Sticky rice with fried chicken
— Papaya salad
— Some beef thing with vegetable
— Some fish thing
Pros:
— Cheap
Cons:
— Food is meh

What better time to come to my favorite CASUAL Thai restaurant in Houston than during their customer appreciation months (now until May 31, 2015), where:
Baked fresh mussels — 4.95
Papaya Salad — 5.95
Crispy whole fish — 5.95
My must orders are the:
Ground beef pad kra praw — you can also get ½ order of this dish with rice and soup for a few dollars less.
Crispy whole fish — I don’t normally like tilapia, but this tastes so yummy with the tamarind dipping sauce

Thai Spice is one of the very few Thai restaurants my parents will willingly go out of the house to eat. You order first at the counter, they bring the food to you, and then you pay after! I’ve been here several times, and we generally get about the same 2 dishes and change it up a little bit every other time. They offer a condiment bar, which includes Chili-​Garlic-​Lime-​Fish Sauce (OMG LITERALLY MY FAVORITE THING ABOUT THAI SPICE — this is possibly every flavor a Thai girl could ever want all in one fish sauce. Seriously this is the bomb dot com), chili flakes, jalapenos, etc etc. It’s also BYOB (or so it says according to the signs), and they also offer free hot tea! On the side, they also serve various Thai desserts and other things too if you’re interested in those.
Dumplings: 1/​5, These are not your typical potsticker looking dumplings. These look more similar to shu mai (dim sum dish). I ate one and decided immediately I didn’t like it. I’m probably spoiled and biased since I do love gyoza, other dumplings, etc etc, so this really didn’t satisfy me.
Baked Mussels: 5/​5, ORDER THESE! They’re baked and come with a simple broth. It comes with a sauce that is predominately chili, so it’s pretty spicy, but so worth it. You can tell the mussels are fresh!
Papaya Salad (Som Tam): 4/​5, this is pretty darn good, but I have had better. The only thing I wish is that it was more spicy. Also it comes with peanuts! If you’re not really a peanut in your food type of person (which I’m not, surprise surprise), you should request no peanuts.
Yum Woon Sen: 1/​5, meehh I’ve had mucchh better. Everything was cooked very well in the dish, but it just tasted off to me. It needs a bit more lime & fish sauce in my opinion. It just left a weird taste in my mouth.
Nam Tok: ⁴⁄₅. You can either order it with pork or beef. I personally prefer pork. The slices are a tiny bit overcooked sometimes. The pork slices are sometimes very fatty (yum!) or not fatty at all. It really depends on the day. This dish is heavy in lime & red onion flavor, but it’s delicious!
Tom Yum Pla: 5/​5, It’s a fish that is served with a broth seasoned with chili, lemongrass, and other various flavors. It comes with a tea light on the bottom, so the dish is warmed the whole time. Be warned, there are bones! So be very careful when eating the fish.

This is my go-​to spot for inexpensive, decent Thai food.
This place is by no means upscale. The food is more of a ‘home-​cooked’ feel, but always hits the spot. It’s counter service and they bring the food out to you after ordering and taking a number. Really haven’t had anything here I disliked. My favorites are the papaya salad, and both the fried fish and steamed fish are excellent. There’s a small chili/​spice bar on the side of the restaurant (if the food is not spicy enough to your liking).
But I agree with David N — the lunch special is where it’s at for this place; for $ 5.95 you get rice and three small dishes, and if you dine in, there is self-​serve soup from the counter — unbohlievable deal! Thai Spice Express and Chinese Café remain my two favorite cheap, quick, and dirty weekday lunch spots in town.
Pro tip: there are multiple Thai Spice locations scattered throughout the Houston area, but this one is the cheapest.

I absolutely love this place! We live in Dallas and when we go to Houston, this is a must eat restaurant. Their clay pot mussels are to die for. It’s all in their dipping sauce… so amazing. The fried tilapia is also good. It can be boney though.
I’ve also had the tiger cried beef, curried catfish (VERY SPICY), fish cakes, tom yum soup, and basil beef. All were fresh and delicious. The tom yum soup was a little too sour for me but still delectable. The shrimps were of generous portion although they have the head and shell on still. I’ve never had a disappointing meal here. Love it.

This is one of my favorite restaurants in Houston. every time I go home I have to make a stop here! Their mussels are amazing and the spicy sauce they serve it with is sooo hot, but sooo good. I could probably eat one whole order of the mussels by myself and call it dinner and be happy.
Other favorites here include their crispy fried fish and their Chinese broccoli. I also love their sticky rice, although they don’t always have it with the mango :-/​
Some people have said quality here is declining, but I haven’t noticed it. Although, in the past 10 years that we’ve been coming here we have had «hit or miss» experiences. Overall, nothing bad enough to keep us away bc most of the time the food is excellent!