26/12/08
I had my dinner with a couple of friends at suanthai..Had the cheaper ala carte buffet..Oh my gosh..the experience of the tom yum soup was great..Dont think clear looking soup= not spicy..it was super spicy man!haha..lucky there is water beside me to put out the fire gushing out from my mouth..

Food Rating(0-not nice, 5-super nice)
Dishes ordered (not all i can remember) :
chicken basil leaves (4 star)
black pepper tofu (3 star) (ps tofu my fav so abit biased) =)
chicken tom yum soup (3 star)
pandan leave chicken (4 star) one time order
satay chicken (4 star) one time order
mixed vegetables (2 star)
baby kailan (3 star)
And desserts!!! thai ruby, tapioca and fruits! it was great man!

Service:
The people were quite attentive to our requests and responded immediately..good service overall..

ambience:
it was nice and cosy and the couch was comfortable..

Pricing:
in total each paying about 27 plus per person for a friday dinner..quite worthwhile..

Overall i feel that it is a worthwhile place to go for! =)

Date of Visit: 29 Nov 2008 (Sat)
Time of Visit: 2.15pm

Was here for the high tea on Saturday with a friend after reading from reviewers that this restaurant is 'quite good'. In fact, after our experiences here, we were very disappointed as it was way below our expectations.

We arrived at about 2.15pm and was ushered into the restaurant. Although the buffet would only start at 2.30pm, we were told that we could help ourselves with the drinks (coffee and tea) and on the dishes that were already ready. Altogether there were only 8 main dishes, which took sequence to be ready.

The 8 dishes were Fried Noodles (like mee goreng though sweeter), Fried Rice (thought it was the famous Pineapple Fried Rice but it was not but just normal fried rice), Fried Popiah (normal though not oily), Fried Vegetables (normal), Green Curry Chicken (gravy too watery and pathetically small pieces of chicken), Fried Brinjol (normal), Tom Yam Soup (ok but too spicy with the small prawns and squids and chilli padi in which my friend had choked due to the spicyness despite he could eat chilli very well) and Fish Cake (normal).

As for the dessert counter, there were red ruby with coconut cream (ok), tapioca (this was the only dish we liked as it was very sweet and tasty) and fresh fruits of water melon, papaya and honey drew. There was no kuehs or other desserts!

That's all for the high tea, though priced at about $13.00++, it was disappointing as at this price, we could go for better high tea buffet with more variety and better food (i.e. can only think of Quality and Bayview Hotels as they are similar, if we disregard those that have 1-for-1 promotions which is not a fair comparison). We felt it was not worth it and not value for money here.

As for the ambience, it was ok but a bit dark (though we were seated quite near to the windows) but we felt something was strange and funny. The restaurant played western oldies music which did not match the theme of the restaurant and decorations (with Thai paintings, lightings and also with a photo of the Thai King and Queen at the counter) as we expected some Thai music or songs.

Service wise was bad and slow despite of no crowd. Our water was not refilled automatically as we had to highlight the waiter each time before they would come over to refill.

Making things worst, we were only given one plate to fill our food and have to 'reuse and recycle' it. This was absurb as it was the very first time we have ever encountered such 'unusual' practice (maybe with this policy, staff will have lesser plates to wash or wanted to save money for the detergents!!!). Only the desserts have some bowls and small plates for you to take and use.

At about 4 plus, even before we had finished eating, the waiter cleared our 'one and only' plates leaving us with no plates to refill our food!!!

There were only about 4-5 tables occupied during our meal there. Although the buffet would end only at 5.30pm as we were told by the waitress who attended to us at the entrance (which later we were told again that it would end at 5pm), at about 4.40pm, the waiters had already given us the look to 'want us to leave soon'...

Overall, our experience here was very disappointing and below our expectations as we felt it would be good following many positive reviews here.

In addition, we did not come here with a high expectation or expect to be served good or expensive food but at least to have a more decent spread and a few more dishes but it failed us. Also the 'weird' one plate 'policy' and poor service were 'eye opening' experience for us!

Don't think we will ever come back here again unless they can do something to improve immediately to regain our and public's confidence! (Sigh)

Aiya if i was to come on Mon-Thurs, the deal would be even SWEETER man!! Got promotion now. Every 4, the 4th diner eats FREE. =(

Over at Suanthai, the food are pretty much authentic and the buffet spread is wide with standard (28 dishes) and budget (23 dishes). So how to see?? One got seafood included, budget is all meat sans seafood.

Despite the wide variety, there are still some hits and misses.So the hits are

Green mango Salad
Green Curry with Beef
LaLa with Thai Chilli Paste
Pandan Wrapped Chicken
Deep Fried Squid with Butter Sauce
Boneless Stuffed Chicken Wings

The food is slightly more salty as they are supposed to go with rice so if you are not a carbo or have a big appetite, pls monitor ur rice consumption, if not, you will be too stuffed to sample the other dishes.

19th OCT 2008

Initially, I was planning to introduce the family to one of my favourite Japanese joint at Robertson Quay for lunch... Alas, it rained heavily and in the end, to protect my baby niece from the downpour, we opted to go some place where it is fully sheltered - Liang Court.

Located at the basement of Liang Court lies a few restaurants and one of them was Suanthai. For the weekend, Suanthai was offering a special high-tea buffet (2:30pm - 5:00pm) consisting of 15 dishes. However, what made us went ahead with Suanthai was the fact that the waitress notified us that we could actually start immediately (even though the time then was only 1:45pm). Awesome!

Stepping in, Suanthai was nicely deco'ed, dimly lit, with a soothing 70s-80s music running in the background. The interior is very spacious and is baby-tram (and probably wheel-chair) friendly.

Extrapolating from their ala carte buffet menu and from my failing memory, I think we had a choice of the following: Green Mango Salad / Deep Fried Thai Sesame Prawn Cakes / Rice Cake with Special Thai Sauce / Tom Yam Soup with Chicken / Olive Rice / Stir Fried Tung Hoon - Thai Style / Green Curry with Chicken / Deep Friend Chicken Drumlettes (which was later replaced by Chicken strips with Basil Leaves) / Thai Spring Roll / Thai Fish Balls / Stir Fried Mixed Vegetable with Oyster Sause / Stir Fried Samal Long Beans (which was later replaced by Thai Baby Kai Lan.)

The Buffet Dessert table has a nice selection of Chendol with Thai Red Ruby / Tapioca with Coconut Milk / Mixed Fruits Platter. Free flow of Coffee and Tea was also available.

To me, the quality of the spread on offer was rather good considering it cost $12.80++ per head. There were actually quite a few shining stars out of this lot which included the Olive Rice, stir-fried Tung Hoon, Green Curry Chicken and their various vegetables. Their fried stuffs were pretty decent too and more importantly, not too oily! The dessert was nice too, although their tapioca was a little too hard for my liking. A notable mention about their coffee and tea... they were actually pretty good... At least good enough for me to go back for seconds and thirds!

I really think for $12.80++, it is indeed a buffet worth going to.