Thai by Thai, New Town Petaling Jaya

It was quite by chance we stumbled across this restaurant. We were scouring New Town for affordable lunch meals when our paths crossed with this quaint place. It looked kind of new so we decided to give it a try. 

The ambience was nice. Of course R liked it because we were the only people in the air- conditioned eatery. The decor went well with the Thai theme with large paintings of elephants. J and S concurred with R’s opinion, rating it a 7/10.

The service was quite efficient too. Probably because, again, we were the only people there. They promptly served us our drinks after taking our order. So, that would probably be a 7/10.

The food and drinks were a different story though. In the menu’s introduction, the restaurant’s delicacies are based on the owner’s Thai wife who hails from Chiang Mai region (hence Thai by Thai). Maybe they have different palates in Chiang Mai? We dunno…but none of us particularly enjoyed our food. We love our Thai food and therefore we hold it to a certain high standard in our food circle.

S had the beef kuey teow soup (RM 5.90) and the iced Thai milk tea (RM4.90). She feels that the greatest Thai export after tom yum and lady boys would be the milk tea. Therefore, she was let down by the weird taste of her tea. She at first attributed the peculiar taste to the different region this restaurant’s food is claiming to be from but the more she thought about it, she just felt that it was plain awful. The tea was too sweet as they put sugar on top of the milk in the tea. She could not even finish her glass. And others pointed out that it must be so bad that S was eating the ice inside of the drink instead of drinking it. Yah, she felt slightly dizzy after drinking that uber sweet concoction. 

The beef kuey teow soup was pretty generic. In their defence, the beef was tender and thinly sliced. However, the soup base was tasteless. I mean, she gets it that customers can add salt and other condiments according to their personal preference but the soup really lacked any depth of flavour. It was just like plain water mixed with noodles and beef instead of being infused with aromatic herbs or beef stock. So she gave the soup a 5/10 for being meh and the milk tea 0/10 for even existing.

J ordered the pineapple fried rice (RM 15.90) with hot Thai coffee (RM 4.90). Do you remember a while back when he ordered the pineapple fried rice from Streat Thai in Jaya One? Now he is giving the fried rice a second chance at redemption. And he was not disappointed. Much. The fried rice was served in a pineapple (yay!) and had 3 pieces of prawns on top of it. And you could definitely see the pieces of chicken in the fried rice. The taste however was slightly disappointing as it was sorely lacking seasoning. The coffee tasted as awful as the tea as they added sugar to the already sweet milk coffee. We love our food and drinks but we do not wish to die from them, okay. Overall, he rated his eating experience a 5/10 there.

R also tried the pineapple fried rice and had similar comments regarding it as J. Instead of ordering a drink, he chose to try the iced dessert (RM 7.90), which looked totally different from the picture they showed in the menu. Overall, he also felt the food and drink deserved 5/10.

Overall our meal cost us RM 60.95 including a 10% service charge. We shall not bring up our best and most affordable Thai restaurant so far as it seems unfair (coughs, MyElephant).

Here is the address lest you are interested:

No 10, Jalan 52/18, Lapangan Merdeka, 46200 Petaling Jaya

Until the next review,

Honest Foodies Review Team