Càm O'n - Thai Food - Botafogo — Restaurant in Região Geográfica Imediata do Rio de Janeiro

EDIT FOR CONTEXT, given the thorough response by the restaurant: fair enough, my reference for 'authentic thai food' is only from trips to Bangkok and eating regularly at most of the best thai restaurants in LA and NY. Your mileage may vary depending on where you've eaten your thai food. I did try more than just the pad thai here though (4 dishes total). Apologies for suspecting the BBQ sauce.

Suggestion to the restaurant - it sounds like the chef is fully capable of delivering authentic thai food but need to balance that with the Brazilian tastes and habits. Perhaps the servers can ask the customers when they sit down if they are very familiar with thai food or not and serve them accordingly.

ORIGINAL: By no means is the thai food authentic (I think there may have been BBQ sauce even in my pad thai), but everyone is very nice there and I'm not sure there's anywhere else to get anything close to real thai food in Rio. However I had a thai craving and unfortunately am not sure if this was anywhere close enough to what the taste of real thai food is, to...

The restaurant is situated in a quiet area of Botafogo, away from the noisy main street. The space is large, and the number of staff available is impressive. I visited twice.

On my first visit, I ordered the bao as an appetizer, and it did not disappoint. For my main dish, I had the red curry, which was hot and well-prepared. The lemonade was just okay, but the tamarindo dessert was worth trying, even for those like me who aren't big fans of sweets.

However, my second visit was not as enjoyable. We ordered the rolls as an appetizer, and they were decent. For the main course, I chose the Khao Soi, which was disappointing and lacked flavor. It tasted more like a Brazilian version of the original Khao Soi and fell below average. The chicken was bland, and the overall dish did not work for me. My friend ordered the green curry, which was decent but came with too much coriander.

Overall, the experience can vary greatly—sometimes it’s good, and other...

I have worked in Thailand and Malaysia on-and-off for several years and have never been impressed with the few Thai places we've been to in Rio. This place is the real deal. The flavors were very authentic, though it seems none of the chefs were actually Thai but Brazilians who have traveled frequently to Thailand. Service was wonderful. I have a fish allergy and both the waiter and the chef were very concerned to tell me exactly how the food was prepared and warned that shrimp paste figured in many of the dishes. I was okay with that, but they really cared that I didn't order something I'd regret. The only less-than-terrific dish was the mango sticky rice my wife and I shared for dessert, but it was perfectly fine. The prices are very reasonable. The dining areas weren't fancy but perfectly fine. We...