Esarn Kheaw could be counted as a (kind of) local Thai restaurant of mine but until Rehana told me about it I’d never even heard of it! Clearly others had heard of it as when we walked in for our meal just after 7.30 it was absolutely heaving.

We were served by the most camp waiter ever but he was an absolutely crack up and proceeded to tell us all about his upcoming 30th birthday celebration. I’m not actually sure he did much waitering as his main job seemed to be to walk around and check on everyone and entertain them!

Food-wise Rehana and I tried

Starters:

Son-in-law’s Eggs which was maybe one or one and a half hard boiled eggs which had then been deep fried and cut up, then served with a sort of sweet and sour sauce and fried garlic and shallots. This was some thing different though it did feel a bit pricey that we were basically paying a £1+ per quarter of an egg.

Kai Bai Tauy. Deep fried marinated chicken, wrapped in a pandanus leaf, served with a chilli sauce. This was rather disappointing as the chicken was overcooked and flavourless.

Main course

Pla Jien. Which was a crispy whole pomfret with shitaki mushroom, ginger, spring onion, coriander and oyster sauce. We were looking for a fish which was a bit less fishy-oily and more white fleshy. Unfortunately neither of us knew what a pomfret was and our waiter didn’t properly explain what it was. It was a fairly average dish to be honest.

The best dish of the night for me was the Gaeng Pet Pedyang. Roasted duck cooked in coconut milk with grapes, pineapple and Thai red curry paste. Having the grapes in the curry was certainly an interesting addition. The sauce was divine even if it was pretty much only a red curry.

Overall I was a bit disappointed with the food. I would have said the success rate of the food was 1.5 out of the 4 which is pretty low down on the scale. The meal was also a lot more expensive than I was expecting it to be considering the location (its probably once you start to add in the price of rice and drinks.) Would I come back? I read that its supposed to be a little different than other Thai restaurants and admittedly their offerings on the menu do have something a bit different. So perhaps I would come back just to try it out.