Bangkok Best

Closed! It was definitely not the best. It really wasn’t good at all. The owners picked the wrong city for this restaurant, SF, where there’s so much great Thai food. This could have actually done well in a strip mall in some lesser burgh.

We were hungry and desperate on the 4^th of July and resorted to this sad dirty place. No cilantro?! Tiny portions for the high price. No reason to ever go back. A Thai restaurant with no cilantro, I just can’t get over that. They weren’t even just out, the waitress said they never have cilantro.

A solid Thai spot for those looking for a quick lunch. I had the drunken noodles and they were A-​OK — just enough spice, a decent amount of chicken and the noodles were just right. Nothing much for décor, and the service was emotionless and speedy. I did appreciate the constant water refills! I will definitely be back for lunch.

Bangkok Best is overselling it; more like Bangkok Okay.
Red Curry — okay.
Pad Se Ew — Also pretty good.
Service — When we’re literally the only people in the restaurant and I still have to shout across the room 2 times for the check then at best we can call the service lacking.
Came here on a whim and because it was close by. Next time i’ll walk another block or two. If you end up here, its not the worst thing in the world so don’t be afraid to go in if you’re starving. Just don’t expect anything more than passable thai food.

I’d give this place a very solid 3-​stars. I came here with some friends for dinner around 7:30pm. Service was fast, place was relatively empty. Not very clean but it wasn’t more dirty than other, similar restaurants. They seated us near the door which doesn’t close on its own, which was really annoying because despite the sign on both sides of the door that clearly lets door-​openers know to CLOSE IT behind them, nobody seemed to know how to read English and we kept having to interrupt our own meal close the door ourselves so that the cold air wouldn’t chill us to the bone.
Food was what we expected. We ordered chicken pad thai and pork with broccoli for 3 people – if we were hungrier we should have ordered more (serving size for pork with broccoli was for a single person if you included rice, while the noodle dish was a little more) but we weren’t too hungry. It was pretty good. Could have had more meat in the pad thai but overall the food tasted as expected.
So overall again, a very standard 3-​star. I didn’t think it was «bleh”-worthy gross at all, I just didn’t come in with high expectations and therefore all my expectations were met.

Skip! Bleh!

I hadn’t been here in years because seems like a slightly higher priced version of Banana House down the block. But BH was closed for renovations so went here. I got a similar item, the Garlic Chicken, to what I get at BH and it had a weird greasy taste and the chicken was tough. Had an appetizer of calamari that was ok, but this item pales vs. the BH version, the Garlic Pan.

Fried tofu appetizer… the tofu itself tasted a bit off to me. You really had to douse it in the sauce to want to continue eating it.
The red curry itself was pretty tasty, but REALLY spicy. I think overall, things are a lot spicier here than I’m used to, even the Pad See Ew was covered in spicy pepper flakes.
This place is a pretty regular run-​of-​the-​mill FiDi establishment, but I took off a star for my crispy rice. I mean… really? You are a Thai restaurant who cooks rice for literally 90 percent of your dishes and you can’t get the rice right?
Tsk tsk.

I just had lunch here today and it was pretty fucking tragic.
I started out with a cup of the Tom Ka coconut soup with chicken, followed with Pad Thai and fried Tofu. The soup was absolutely bland… I quite frankly am baffled in how you can make what should be a flavorful coconut soup into something that tasted like white opaque water. Now I suppose my doctor would thank them because I imagine there was absolutely zero sodium in the soup. My tastebuds, however, had other rather violent thoughts about the Chef and his crappy soup.
The Pad Thai was mediocre at best, and the fried tofu was tragically prepared… A couple of bites into it, I was wondering whether this is indeed Bangkok’s best food, or its worst. Not having made the trip to Thailand yet, I must admit this restaurant is an atrocious marketing brochure for Thai cuisine if I ever saw one.

Doesn’t Bangkok Best sound like a Jean-​Claude Van Damme movie where he ends up in a death match with a muscular Asian guy who has a black belt in some martial art only known to some Himalayan country whose food still moves in their rice bowls? After eating there, the more accurate name would be Bangkok Meh because there is little that excites me about the lunch menu at this FiDi eatery located on the busy corner of Kearny and Bush. It’s standard-​issue Thai executed in the most standard-​issue manner for standard-​issue customers like me who really didn’t give coming here a moment’s thought.
My friend Jonathan and I were desperate to find a place for lunch that was different from the usual suspects of my habitué. Even though I’ve worked nearby at various points in my career, I had never been to Bangkok Best. Suits. Wall-​to-​wall suits. That’s who eats here, and no one else. All the dishes are in the $ 7 – 10 range, which makes it easy to split the bill with not too much long division. Since I was focused more on the conversation than the menu, I simply ordered the $ 8 Pad Thai with Chicken (see photo). Does it say something to you that I have to look at the photo I took of it to remember it? All I can say is that it brought new dimension to the term «generic».
FOOD — 2 stars… that was Pad Thai, wasn’t it?
AMBIANCE — 2.5 stars… sea of suits
SERVICE — 2.5 stars… swift
TOTAL — 2 stars… what’s the name of this place again?

My group of 7 came in around 8:30pm and were seated right away. Many of us ordered the pad thai and/​or pumpkin curry. I ordered my pad thai medium spicy and it came out so bland that I ended up putting 2 full scoops of sirracha on to give it a bit of kick. The flavor was lacking as well. The spices used were dull and flavorless. The pumpkin curry was a little better, but not much. While the pumpkin curry was spicy, it was lacking content (needed more meat and veggies). I will probably not return. 2 Stars only for fast seating and fast service.