Real, authentic Thai noodles in England.. whaat? 😍
My mom and I were in London to celebrate a belated Thai Mother’s Day (photo & video diary coming up soon!). We ate lunch at this Thai restaurant my cousin recommended called Horapha Thai Cuisine.
Atmosphere & interior of the restaurant
The restaurant is medium-sized with mostly dark wood furnitures. The ceiling lights are so pretty. I really liked the Thai art pieces decorating the walls. There weren’t that many customers so it was rather quiet at the time.
Food & Drinks
The food overall was not the most “wow” but it was alright.
We started off with a bowl of noodle soup each. Mom got the Nam tok noodle soup which contains a soup stock enriched with raw cow or pig blood (I’m not sure if they actually added it in this one). She said the noodles from another Thai restaurant around the area tasted better. I had the Tom yum noodle soup. For both of our Thai tongues, the soup wasn’t spicy enough so we had to add more chilli and seasonings in it.
Although the taste wasn’t the best compared to noodles sold in Thailand, it was refreshing to eat this warm dish that reminds me of home. Plus, it is pretty rare to find real Thai noodles sold in England so this was a nice treat.
After being almost full from our noodles, this gigantic tray came along. 😂😭 This is Som Tum Tard which is a huge tray with a variety of Thai food - spicy papaya salad (som tum), grilled chicken, fried chicken wings, sticky rice, rice noodles (kanom jeen), pork rinds (kab moo), boiled eggs and a sauce. The taste was an “okay”. My mom seemed to like the rice noodles, and I enjoyed the sticky rice with some chicken.
This was when we realised we ordered way too much for the two of us and couldn’t finish everything. 😓
For drinks, I had my favourite Thai drink which is Thai tea. It was a lovely, sweet drink to go with the spicy food we ordered. Mom had still water with ice.
Desserts
… I honestly still don’t know how we managed to fit desserts inside our stomach after those enormous portions of food. But we did. 😂 Mom had the black beans with sago. I ate the sticky rice with durian. Both are bathed in coconut milk. At first I didn’t want to order it but I haven’t had this Thai dessert in so long that my fatty self couldn’t resist hahaha. Overall, the taste is great and very satisfying.
A photograph of the late Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej. There’s also a photo of the current king on the other side of the wall.
The main thing that made this whole eating experience at Horapha slightly unpleasant was the time we had to wait for our food - it took a long, long time for the food to be served. My mom was so hungry she said “I’m so hungry that I’m hungry in the next life too.” (it sounds funnier in Thai 😂).
On top of that, there was only one waitress serving all the customers by herself. I’m sure (well, I certainly hope) that during the peak hours, there are more staff to help around because whenever we needed to order something, it took a while for that one waitress to come take our orders and bring the food. I admire her hard work and management skills though. Props to her for serving all the customers all by herself at lunch time while keeping a friendly character.
In conclusion, Horapha Thai Cuisine is a decent restaurant if you want to taste some unique Thai dishes that are not easily found in western countries such as the noodle soups and coconut milk-based desserts. However, don’t expect to receive extremely fast service. 😅
With love,
My rating
FOOD: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
SERVICE: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
AMBIENCE: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
PRICE: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
♡ Food tastes mediocre but they have Thai dishes not commonly sold in England
♡ Waitress was amiable but quite busy
☓ Extremely slow service - took forever to get our food
♡ Atmosphere was moderately nice
♡ Average value for money
Horapha Thai Cuisine
82 Queensway
London
W2 3RL
United Kingdom
Tel: +4420 7221 2280
Website: horaphathaicuisine.co.uk