The Plough

Old fashioned two bar pub with a separate thai restaurant. Standard national beers and the public bar has a pool table. The food is excellant and reasonably priced with a good choice of thai dishes. There is a large car park at the back.

Nice food, really liked it especially the burger! The restaurant is really old style, the staff is friendly, helpful & pleasant,

Was staying with friends around the corner from the Plough who I met while travelling in Thailand. They had wanted to come here before but had decided to wait until I visited to try it out. Their wait wasn’t in vain. We had a mixture of starters and mains and the food was of a really high standard. The flavours were very close to the ones I remember from Thailand. Personal highlights of the night for me were the Fish cakes, the ribs and the Massaman curry.

When I recently noticed Unilocaler Pat G’s invitation for me to visit The Plough again as there had a been a change of management since my last visit when I was unimpressed by the food
Walking in from the pub car park, I noticed that they’ve rebranded themselves as Chaba Thai. The interior has also been refurbished. In common with the pub itself, the décor is now modern with a sleek dark brown colour scheme giving the place an inviting air
After picking a drink at the bar, I was invited to choose my table. The service was great from the Thai speaking waitresses. A bowl of complementary prawn crackers arrived while I was perusing the menu. They were also attentive enough to turn up the lights to help me read the menu and my newspaper
I went with my test dish for Thai restaurants. Unusually, though the place has apparently changed hands according to Pat G, they made the same mistake with my pad thai as on my previous visit — they were too sweet and I did miss the crunch of crushed peanuts which usually accompany pad thais but not here
I had paired my noodles with chicken gand dang, advertised in the menu as a spicy red curry. The waitress even checked with me that I had intended to order a spicy hot curry and I answered in the affirmative. While the dish was inoffensive, the spicy description must have been calibrated more to Leatherhead than Bangkok palates, so much so that I was able to drink the remaining broth like a soup
At this point, my Unilocal rating was ⁴⁄₅ for the service but only ²⁄₃ for the food where a 3 in my book means inoffensive enough but failing to make it onto my rotation of regular places to dine at
So, in true Unilocal fashion, I used a tie breaker and ordered dessert, something I don’t often do, especially at an Asian restaurant. I went with the banana hot bowl, described as steamed slices of banana in coconut milk and sugar and sprinkled with sesame seed. What arrived was very reminiscent of a Malaysian nyonya dish called bubur cha cha, which usually had things like pieces sweet potato and yam also added to give the dish variety and body
For the childhood memories evoked by the dessert, I’m going to round up my score to a 4, mainly because of the good service but while the food side has improved, it could still do better, especially as the prices are at the higher medium end. For good Thai food, I like to see a mixture and balance of different flavours, something which Chaba Thai could continue to evolve

I suggest Yee Gan O pays the Thai restaurant at The Plough another visit. Since he went there in March 2009 there has been a change of management and we have found it consistently good. Staff are charming an helpful.