SAWADEE KA!!!
I usually do reviews on beauty and skincare, but today I'll be reviewing a restaurant that I visited last Friday...
18巷泰國餐廳 Soi 18 Thai Cuisine
This restaurant opened recently, and is located in the heart of Causeway Bay, at the World Trade Centre. You have to take the lift up to the 13th floor, and by the way, the "button" that you press for the lift is actually pretty cool - you have to put your whole palm over it to for it to light up! There are two restaurants on the 13th floor - Soi 18 and Gyuuzen Japanese Restaurant, both owned by the same people, but they have completely different atmospheres inside!! Since I'm pregnant and I can't eat sashimi, and I somehow don't like the taste of beef anymore, we chose to eat at Soi 18 this time, but we'll definitely be back to try out the Japanese Restaurant later!!
As you walk into the restaurant, the waiters will all greet you with "Sawadee ka" or "Sawadee krap", and most of the staff there are really from Thailand (but they can all speak Cantonese, since they have been living in Hong Kong for so many years)!! The ambience inside is quite warm and relaxing, and it's a great place for gatherings! Since we had a group of five, we were placed in one of the tables in the far end of the room, so we could have some privacy! The hanging lights were quite nice, but they did hang quite low, and even I had to be careful when standing up, in case I banged my head, and I'm 168cm!
The decorations on the sides of the restaurant are quite simple yet pretty - my favourite hot pink!!!
The ambience is great, but how about the food? Since they just opened recently, they only have a temporary menu, but the waiters and waitresses were very helpful in recommending dishes!! Instead of water, we were given a kind of Thai Tea, which reminded me of the spiced tea we had in India, and I really like that taste!! I saw that they had a Thai Ginger Tea and was going to order that, but the waitress pointed out that it's quite spicy, and that the Lemongrass Tea would be a better option for me, so I ordered that instead. Sorry, I didn't take a photo of it, but it came in a small tea pot, and it had a lot of lemongrass inside!! It was a nice experience, but I still preferred the Thai Tea more!
For our starters, we ordered the Raw Prawns with Thai Chillies, but I couldn't eat it since it's RAW, but hubby and his friends finished it in no time!
We also ordered the Thai Style Grilled Pork Neck, which came with a small container of glutinous rice. The grilled pork neck was slightly too dry for my liking, but the glutinous rice tasted quite nice with the sauce (though the rice was quite hard to spoon out of the container, and the sauce was actually quite spicy for me).
Next came the Tom Yum Soup, which was surprisingly yummy! I'm usually not a fan of Tom Yum Soup, because they're usually quite spicy, but we were able to have it non-spicy, and there were a lot of prawns inside too!! Apparently if we had ordered the spicy version, the Tom Yum Soup would be made with fish instead.
This was recommended by the staff as the "Dish of the Day" - Claypot Glass Vermicelli with Crab!! Again, I couldn't try the crab, but I did have a taste of the vermicelli which was soaked in the juice from the crab - thumbs up for this dish!!!
The Phat Thai was really good, with a lot of added prawns!! The flavour was just right and very appetising, but the only complaint here is that the portion was slightly small for our big stomachs!!
The stir-fried vege was really nice, and since it was placed in front of me, I finished pretty much the whole dish by myself!!
We also ordered the Hainanese Chicken, which was okay, but nothing special.
We also ordered the beef brisket in yellow curry and garlic bread to go with it! The taste of the curry was quite nice and creamy, but there wasn't a lot of brisket pieces inside. The garlic bread was okay, but it would've been nicer if the garlic taste was stronger.
As the portions were relatively small, and we had big eaters on our table, I was still feeling slightly hungry after eating all our mains...so we ordered dessert! This is the Dessert Platter, and I think it was the best part of the entire meal!!!
Our Dessert Platter consisted of:
Mango & Sticky Rice
I couldn't try the mango, but the sticky rice was made perfectly - the rice was chewy, but it wasn't too hard, and it wasn't too sweet either!!
Black Sticky Rice & Sweet Coconut Milk
Again, the rice was chewy but not too hard, and it wasn't too sweet!!
Water Chestnut & Coconut Custard Topping
The topping was very creamy and had a strong coconut flavour, and it had lots of water chestnut and corn inside!! This was so good that I had two!!!
Agar & Young Coconut Jelly
At first I wasn't going to try this, as I'm not a fan of this type of dessert, but I tried it, and it was surprisingly yummy!!! It had a strong young coconut juice flavour (unlike the ones at other places), and I actually wanted more!!!
I was full after eating all the desserts, and it was overall a very satisfying meal!!!
We paid around HKD230 per person for this meal, which is quite reasonable, considering the location, the atmosphere, and the variety of food we ordered!!
The bonus? One of the owners of this restaurant is my sister-in-law, Grace Cheung, the winner of Miss Asia 2007 (do you remember her? I've posted photos of her before on my blog)!! She's at the restaurant on most nights now, so in addition to the nice food, you can also dine with a Miss Asia!!!
Since they are still a new restaurant, they still have a lot of room for improvement, but they are open to suggestions, so feel free to comment, and do give them time to improve!!!
For more information, please visit their pages on Openrice and Facebook:
Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!!!
