Smiling Thai — Restaurant in Queensland

Smiling Thai in Toowoomba, situated in the Tower Shopping Village precinct, has been serving customers since 2020, opening amidst the early days of COVID-19 in Australia.

The restaurant is easy to spot from the parking area, with ample free parking available. The vibrant, colorful signage featuring smiling cartoon characters certainly draws attention and invites you in. Inside, there is plenty of seating, with additional outdoor options facing the carpark. It seems the majority of their customers are walk-ins and phone orders for takeaway.

The premises is very clean, and their takeaway menu offers a wonderful glimpse into the owners’ story and the history behind Smiling Thai. Staff are quick to greet new customers, friendly, and helpful. Ordering is straightforward, and while takeaway orders appear to be prioritised, the wait time for dine-in food is not excessive.

The dishes are visually appealing, though they tend to lack the level of spice typically associated with authentic Thai cuisine. Notably, the dishes across the board were quite salty during my visit, especially the soup and green curry. The standout for me was the pad see ew - the noodle dish was fantastic, however, the pad thai lacked depth in flavour, the coconut rice lacked the aroma and flavour, and both didn't quite meet expectations. The fish cakes seemed to be store-bought rather than house-made, which was a bit disappointing.

Overall, Smiling Thai offers excellent service at reasonable prices. If you're in the area, I recommend giving their...

It was my second time to visit Toowoomba. I visited Smiling Thai restaurant for the first time. After reading reviews and looking at some photos, I decided to dine in here. It was Friday night and we were a bit too late to the restaurant. The place was packed inside and customers waited for take away. Other customers also stepped in for picking up. I ordered the recommended “Kra Prao Moo Krob” (fried crispy pork with basil) and pointed to the big photo. The “Farang” shop attendant really said it in Thai. I was really getting only kra prao moo krob without rice. LOL, it was my poor English communication. The portion of stream rice was too big, so I ate it without rice. My wife and daughter ordered “Pad See Ew”. The portion size was quite big. My wife could not finished it. While we were waiting for our food, I heard non-stop wok clinking sound from Kitchen. The chef was really working hard in there. Despite of long waiting to be served, the taste is worth it! The taste was authentic Thai! I didn’t really expect this good Thai food in small town far away...

Terrible customer service...!!! Customers,please Check out some of the lowest ratings as this wasn't just our bad experience and we were honestly confused as this has happened just to our family, thinking of we've done something extremely disrespectful by without knowing.. Reading some of those bad reviews gave us a bit of a relief.

To be clear, we didn't ask any staff to rearrange the restaurant tables as we were group of seven, we sat down separately without any hesitation. All we said at the entry was your regular request " table for seven please".. The second question we asked at the table was "does green curry come with a bowl of rice ?". I don't believe any fo these could make a person rude (we are talking CUSTOMER SERVICE here)...!

drove past the town and stopped by at this place to have lunch. Staff looked so angry (even though the name was Smiling Thai 😅), were very rude to our whole family. Ended up walking out within about five minutes without even ordering. Never experienced such a bad customer service...