The Siam Orchid Thai Restaurant

TL;DR version: Fairly decent food if you don't mind waiting an aeon for it.

This probably would have been a 3, but I had to settle on 2 to try and counterbalance the rave reviews from others who seemingly visited a different restaurant to the one we went to.

We arrived at 20:38 on a Saturday night. As a rule I wouldn't meticulously note my time of arrive at a restaurant and in fact I didn't here, but we worked it out later for reasons which will become apparent.

The restaurant was fairly empty, there were two other groups in there, a party of two and a party of four. We were a three so they appeared to be running well under capacity. We were seated quickly by a pleasant if somewhat timid waitress and our orders were taken promptly and drinks arrived.

The waitress brought out the main courses for the couple sitting closest to us and was apologising to them for the wait, this should have been a warning sign for the shape of things to come. We finished our drinks with no sign of our starters and when it became apparent we had been waiting for way too long for a couple of portions of tempura vegetables and some prawn toast we started trying to piece together exactly when we had arrived, with the mobile phone evidence suggesting 20:38. It was a clear hour between sitting down and the arrival of the tempura vegetables. The prawn toast, never one to be rushed, arrived five minutes later.

At this point the party of four had left and the party of two were on their main so we surely had the undivided attention of the kitchen, the mains arrived an acceptable length of time after the starters but the drinks service was also seemingly slow.

The food itself was pretty good, although my tempura vegetables wasn't great, overly crispy and poor value for money. The mains tasted great though and portion size was decent.

My only other gripe was the restaurant door doesn't seem to draw itself fully closed, meaning a draught blows constantly through the place unless the last person in has diligently closed the door behind them. Obviously they won't know to do this so they won't have, and you'll get cold.

Three starters, three mains, 3 beers and 3 soft drinks was £60.

Definitely the best Thai in Carshalton!
You should go in for a meal or have a take away - lots of choice, quick and very authentic.
Really good food.

I went here a few days ago and had a really good meal. The place was clean and nicely decorated. The food was 'clean' tasting, well cooked and really nice. The toilet left a little to be desired nothing wrong with it but not as modern as it could be.

Being quite a ''dificult diner'' i find that alot of restaurants just cant or wont cater for my needs, i am a vegan with particular preferences and i like my food to be cooked in a specific way. I was very happy to see an extensive vegetarian menu and was estatic to find an articulate and very helpful waiter that i didn't have to spend half an hour explaining my preferences to (like i do in most other restaurants). The tempura was very tasty it looked great, well presented and very colourful, the vegetable green curry with coconut rice took me back to thailand with the first mouthful. I have become a regular and I highly recommend this lovely restaurant.

I was looking for vegan options nearby Carshalton, where I live, when I came along to this page, what inspired me to try this restaurant was the review of another vegan. Service is good, food is very tasty and yes the waitress confirmed that majority of Thai dishes don't uses butter/eggs/milk on it (they use coconut milk and vegetable oil instead), making them suitable for vegans. I had tempura and vegetable spring rolls for starters (husband is vegetarian), and main dish I had a lovely vegetable curry (red, mild) with coconut, and garlic rice. Was very yummy :) I got a bit scared of a squared bit on the middle of the vegetables, couldn't precise what that was, looked like little squared bread pieces but tasted like fried egg, then I asked to the waitress and she said that was tofu pieces! I highly recommend the restaurant for vegans (and non vegans too), and I'm gonna be a frequent customer of them now (even because its 10 min walking from home) :)

Best Thai in the area and great location. Haven't been for a while but stumbling across the profile has jogged the memory so I'll be there within the next few weeks.