A Taste of Bangkok

Garlic shrimp, eggplant, and papaya salad. All terrific! Good service, fine to ehhh atmos. Cab isn’t bad. I’d go back.

I don’t quite know what to say. The food was healthy for thai food, not under cooked and cooked in heavy oils but the thai salad wasn’t very good, combination fried rice had a good amount of meat but very bland and both plates were a little on the small side. The salad was supposed to come with peanut sauce but I had to ask for it and there were no chopped eggs as described. Over priced for the food quality and quantity. Did the trick for the time being, the chef was hispanic, I was suprised he didn’t season the food more.
Best thai food i’ve had in LA is Jasmine thai in Reseda.

I love the owners of this restaurant, they are super sweet and are always very accommodating.
But even more importantly I love their Drunken Noodles and Thai Boat (with pork), I can never choose which one I want more so I get both (luckily I have a foodie boyfriend to help). Everything is always really fresh and cooked with a good level of spice… you know the kind, when your nose is running but you can’t stop eating.
They also have really good desserts, the Coconut Ice Cream they make is super yummy and they have real chunks of coconut in there and of course the Mango Sticky Rice is always really good (it helps that they tell you that they won’t make it if the mangoes aren’t ripe).
However, I believe they are moving to a new location due to some remodeling so stay tuned for their new address!

Thai food is my favorite type of ethnic food and so I’m always craving it. I’ve experimented with many Thai restaurants in the SGV and in LA and found that this place has THE best Thai food, EVER! Their Thai tea is AMAZING as well. It’s not like any other Thai teas I’ve ever had. Too bad they will be shutting down by the end of this month for renovations. Where will I get my Thai fix?

My first experience here was a few years earlier when I ordered take out and was less than impressed. I came here much to my chagrin a few weeks back with a couple of people who insisted that we dine here, me being the minority vote between 3 people. The recent visit justified my past decision in not returning.
The orders:
Meekrob (1 star) Deep fried noodles in sweet & sour sauce with bits of chicken and shrimp. And I mean bits. There was barely any there. The charred and burned noodles just didn’t do it for me.
Deep Fried Shrimp (3 stars) Shrimp deep fried in egg roll paper. Not bad, middle of the road. The dipping sauce was sweet and went well with it. Much better than the Meekrob, probably the best item that was ordered.
Masaman Curry (2 stars) This really disappointed. More bland than the blandest of the bland. Being devoid of any flavor, there wasn’t even any spice or kick to it! I didn’t mind the potatoes and chunks of chicken that I found in the curry per se, but there was more bone than meat in those chunks.
Combo Fried Rice (3 stars) This wasn’t a half bad dish, consisting of egg, shrimp, pork, beef and chicken. Most of this was rice, and I know it’s a rice dish, but, for the $ 13 price tag, I wanted to see more volume of the items listed above to be mixed in there. The first and last time I will ever agree to paying over $ 10 for fried rice.
Tom Yum Kai (1.5 stars) I’m usually a fan of this Thai dish. I don’t know if the coconut milk went sour or what, but something just didn’t smell/​taste right. It looked like Tom Yum broth, but didn’t taste anything like it. The chicken was alright, but overall, the rest of the soup wasn’t in the Tom Yum arena.
For most of the dishes, they seem to really skimp on the good stuff and go heavy on the fillers. I probably won’t be back anytime soon, unless I’m strong armed again in returning.

How this place has achieved a 4-​star rating on Unilocal is beyond me, particularly with there being absolutely no shortage of good Thai restaurants nearby. I first tried this place about a year ago for lunch. I remember ordering some spicy tofu and veggies lunch special and a thai iced tea, both of which were completely underwhelming. After seeing how regularly packed they are during lunch (I work right around the corner and pass by daily), I figured that I must have just had a bad experience and decided to give them another shot. This time I ordered pad thai tofu, generally a safe bet and a fair dish to rate a Thai restaurant by. Well, despite being slathered in neon orange sauce, it was bland as hell. Seriously, it was like eating plain, undercooked noodles with soft, unseasoned tofu. I flagged down the waiter and asked for chili sauce, doused the shit out of it, and choked down as much as possible. I will not be giving them an opportunity to strike out a third time. I will instead happily continue to spend my lunch up the street at President Two. Do yourself a favor and do the same.

I honestly don’t know how this place got high reviews. We ordered the drunken noodles and the garlic shrimp because of all of the «good» reviews it received so when we finally ordered the drunken noodles it was EXTREMELY spicy which is odd because we specifically asked for MILD. The size of that entrée was pretty decent I suppose and the taste was alright too .Then we ordered the garlic shrimp which was basically like a dollar per shrimp and the plate was SO small there was more garnishes then the damn dish itself. I was like seriously? Looks like a damn appetizer if you ask me. When we were done eating we were looking at their dessert menu and the mango sticky rice was expensive as sh%t. IDK everything about this place just screamed CHEAP A$$. They charge for rice here and even the lemon they give you with the water was cut RIDICULOUSLY THIN. Like OMG how cheap can you be?! You could literally buy like 15 lemons for like $ 1 Anyways, probably NEVER going to return sorry but prices are whack for the quality & quantity of the food.

Garlic Shrimp is to die for !!! No other restaurant can make it this good. I love spicy good and this one always satisfy my spicy cravings …

Been coming to this place for years. Unfortunately i can’t tell you about all the great things on the menu because every time i go here I always get my favorite dish — drunken noodles. Friend of mine usually always gets the chicken curry. The chicken in the curry is amazingly tender and juicy and the curry sauce is very tasty.
I cant even tell you what it is about the drunken noodles that makes them so good — i just love them. And I always get a thai ice tea with it.
Their thai ice tea is not the same as most other places. It’s a lot sweeter and creamier. I think it’s great — like a desert drink. Although if you don’t like sweet drinks or prefer a more traditional thai ice, you should probably skip it.

I’m always amused by the number of Thai restaurants in the Pasadena area. It seems that there is at least one on almost every commercial block in town– perhaps even more than there are in Thailand.
I usually gravitate toward President Thai over on Rosemead, but A Taste of Bangkok is within walking distance of my house (of course, so are about 12 other Thai food places…) This place is not bad, and I usually get the Roast Duck curry with the Chicken Sate as an appetizer. The service is fast and friendly, and prices are reasonable. The only real drawback is the huge windows that look out on the not-​so-​pretty section of Colorado Blvd. It’s kind of disconcerting to be enjoying your meal as homeless people shuffle by.

Lea F, Jason H, and the others… what are your qualifications for real Thai?
Been going here since the early 1990s, and have been to Thai Town and both places have great food and are comparable. I ask this of you Unilocalers because what have you been eating that constitutes authentic food? Yes, the food is «Americanized,» but if you got to know the people that work there, they just might let you sample real Thai food, and if you know of some real Thai dishes, as you so seem expertly tuned to, ask them if they can whip it up for you. The food you sample here, as in 99% of Thai restaurants, are built around familiarity. Meaning the stuff put on Thai menus won’t offend the taste buds of Americans not used to Southeast Asian food. If you can deal with dishes laden with lime juice and fish sauce and heavy with toasted shallots and garlic, or dark green leafy veggies sauteed in fermented fish and it’s brown fermented goodness (unfiltered fish sauce), please, critique away. BUT before you label ANY food as not being authentic, know and experience what’s REALLY authentic and if you don’t know, ask yourself if you’re even qualified to label certain foods authentic or not.
So what are my qualifications? I’ve grown up with Thais for a majority of my life, and my mother-​in-​law is Thai and her family opened the second Thai restaurant in Los Angeles county, and possibly California. She knows a lot of the restaurant owners in Thai Town and has prepared authentic dishes for me not seen in those 99% of Thai restaurants… my wish is that more authentic Thai food will be served by your local Thai spot and bring a whole new level of Thai food to the American palate
Back to the task at hand: The food is wonderful. The masaman gai is great, with it’s big chunks of soft potato and fall off the bone chicken leg and thigh. Their starter salad is just julienne carrots and hand torn lettuce leafs, but the tangy, creamy sauce it comes with is great. I wish the salad was a bigger portion. Yes, the food may be Americanized, but guess what? I expect it from them and the food is still delicious and the people are as nice as people can be!

I have been coming here since I was a baby!
It was because of this place that my favorite Thai dish is Lad Nah noodles, and it is the first thing I always look for on a menu at any Thai restaurant; their Thai Coffee drink is pretty good too.
A change in the chef has mildly altered the taste in food but it is still good. The service is incredibly attentive and kind!

You’re better off going down the street to Target and buying some precooked Thai in a bag food that never goes bad.
Seriously, how do you get pad Thai or Thai ice tea wrong? Shrimp were over cooked. The pad thai noodles were bland. The Tom Kha Gai was flavorless. The special of the day was not special at all. The beef was tough and over cooked. BLAND even when asked for extra spicy.

Came here with my cousin whose office is right behind the restaurant. It’s not bad for a Thai resto but I’m missing the hot sauce on the table and that made it really less authentic. Anyhow they have lunch special menu and the prices are not bad at all.
They have about 13 items listed that you can choose from, ranges from $ 6.95 to $ 8.95 and they came with a lettuce salad, a scoop of white rice and a scoop of fried rice and the entrée that you chose. I selected #3 — Spicy Chicken with Cashew nuts for $ 6.95 and my cousin chose #2 — Mongolian Beef for $ 7.95. I also added Thai Iced Tea to my order for another $ 2. But that nasty thing didn’t even taste like Thai Ice Tea, it’s like coffee got mixed with tea and milk…
The #2 was great, I luv the mixed although Mongolian Beef that I know used darker soy sauce to cook it, but this one was not bad compared to mine. I could barely find the chicken, it’s mostly stuffed with onion and green pepper and they came in a big chunk of it, plus cashew. It’s forgettable I shall say.
As we ate, I was telling my cousin about Thai Boat noodles when he saw a sign on the wall that this place started serving Boat noodles too, I couldn’t resist to try even tho I was about to be full, I then made an order of it. The pic was definitely much nicer than when the bowl came out. It looked nothing like the pic and although they were very generous with the meat, the broth was so bland and the noodle tasted like it came out from instant noodle bag, very chewy and hard, not in a good way.
Service was pretty good and they know my cousin since he came here pretty often for lunch on weekdays. I would say this place was good for its lunch specials due to the value, otherwise, I wouldn’t step in here on weekends.

My office is right across the street from ‘A Taste of Bangkok’, so out of convenience, I chose to try this place out.
I was quite surprised by how filled this place was during the lunch hour. Usually when I either pass or drive by, the place seems a little dead beat for business.
Anyhow, I tried the Cashew Chicken lunch special. I asked specifically for them to make it extra spicy, and so they did. It was the right amount of spicyness for me but I expected it to be a lot hotter given that it is a Thai place.
I think this place is suitable for lunch servings only. It’s not real quality authentic thai food, meaning a lot of soy sauce and msg in their flavors. Just a very generic place for lunch if you feel for a thai twist.

This place is one of the better Thai places in Pasadena, which isn’t saying much when places like Alhambra or San Gabriel have the best. But for the Pasadena area, you really can’t go wrong here.
Their Pad Thai is great, not overly sweet or sour like some other places *coughChandracough*. It has a nice balance, with the sour being the more powerful taste. Almost everything on their menu is standard Thai, nothing being stand-​out «bad», but nothing spectacular. I haven’t tried any of their curry yet, so I can’t comment.
This place is simply average, with nothing truly outstanding, but nothing terrible either. It’s a very safe pick, and you’re sure to come out satisfied.

I’ve been eating here for years and by far this is the best Thai food in the San Gabriel Valley. Especially in Pasadena.
The other Thai places in Pasadena don’t even come close! The service is excellent and the prices are reasonable.
I highly recommend this place!

I went here for the first time, and I don’t usually eat Thai food so I’m not an expert, but I had a good experience. I ordered the Pad Thai, steamed shrimp dumplings, and Thai Iced tea. The iced tea was really yummy, not too sweet, the dumplings were fair just very simple, and the pad thai was good. My friend said that the color was weird (it was really orange) but, both she and I both agreed that it was pretty good.
The décor was interesting, I felt like I was having dinner at my old aunt’s house, but it was cute. Oh, and it’s a pretty small place. But it totally feels like your at someones house, the servers were like uncle bob and uncle bill in their plain everyday clothes and you could see aunt margie in the kitchen cooking with her apron.
I would totally come here again.

2.5 stars because yes, I’ve had MUCH better but it’s A-​OK for a quick lunch.
Bangkok is a small, cute, cozy, family owned and run restaurant. It is convenient for lunch during the work week because of the quick service. After being seated, you immediately get an iceberg salad and ice water. They offer lunch specials anywhere from $ 6 – 9 and the portions are not bad: the main dish with a scoop of white rice and a scoop of fried rice.
The food is not authentic Thai food meaning the food is sweet, not as spicy/​sour, and the flavor is toned down. The tom yum soup was spicy chicken broth, not very sour, and had very little chicken and mushrooms. The pad thai is sweet without much depth. The sweet and sour fish fillet included two fried fish fillets swimming in watery sweet and sour broth with bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, pineapple chunks and cucumbers. The drunken noodles are a favorite and the veggies are perfectly cooked. My favorite is the cashew chicken which can be very spicy but addictive. The chicken satay was kinda mushy.
Even though the authenticity is mediocre, the smiling service, decent prices, and quick food keeps us coming back; like sophia c said, it’s an office favorite. Good for lunch is you work close by, but don’t go out of your way to come here.

Gives Thai food a bad name! Sadness.
The Pad Thai has a very unnatural overly orange color, and it tastes bad.
Egg rolls were just okay.
Penang curry: the beef was over cooked, but the sauce was edible.
One can do better. Much better.