Kinaree Thai Restaurant — Restaurant in Courtenay

Stickered on the door to Kinaree Thai Cuisine is the word “Sawatdee”—a Thai greeting—following by the phrase, “Thai It. You’ll Like It”, which is both adorable and also probably the catch phrase for various Southeast Asian pornography sites. I’m surprised the owner stopped there with the puns.

“Don’t let regular food Thai you down, har har!” That aside, Kinaree is a fantastic jewel in the heart of a town you’d not usually associate with good Thai food, most likely due to the charming owner that greeted and served us, sporting an untucked dress shirt lacking a Thai (get it, Thai/Tie…, moving on). I do appreciate Thai restaurants for their flare. Call it garish, but they always seem to make it work in my opinion, from the cellophane-topped tables to the red walls and regalia acknowledging the fact that Thailand is still a kingdom. Even the utensils are from Thailand, and they each weighed around 100 grams for some reason. They looked forged from solid brass.

Like any good Thai meal, I started with the prawn salad rolls, a pair with peanut sauce for $7.95, a bit more expensive for my taste. They were good, and you do get two generous rolls justifying the value, but I’d prefer a smaller order at a cheaper price. This was followed by a traditional curry. Rice was spooned from a gigantic bowl, the likes of which you’d see serving royalty from the 17th century (serving to royalty, I mean—because the other makes no sense). Not kidding, some of these dishes look pulled from an epic feast within the walls of a medieval great hall, where cooks had to stand naked inside ovens while they turned the suckling pig, and men with weathered teeth, huge beards and draped in furs tore beef directly from the bone while jesters entertained always on guard of committing some offense that would get them demoted to unich.

But this is Thai, so I had curry with rice. There were also carrots cut to resemble flowers, because…I don’t know, Asia. All this eventually led to dessert, which I’ll dedicate at least a generous 130 words to (or would you rather “one-hundred thir-thai” words), because I seriously don’t know if they were meant to be a joke. Five of the dessert options all involved ice cream. I ordered the deep-fried banana with ice cream while my friend ordered the deep fried ice cream with banana…

I’m not kidding; those were the options, the same ingredients with different parts deep-fried. It makes me wonder why they didn’t offer two more, with both ice cream and banana deep-fried and another where neither are. Our orders were served on identical plates with caramel and chocolate drizzle, presented with a tiny wooden shovel for a spoon. A tiny wooden shovel, I assume also from Thailand. It was odd each plate tasted different, with the deep fried ice cream edging the deep fried banana by a hair. But even as I ordered the dish, I felt someone was playing a joke. Then I remembered the “Thai it” sign outside and realized I should have expected it. This owner was obviously a “wise-Thai”. Oh god, these are getting worse.

Despite the charisma of our host and server, there was a substantial delay in the delivery of food, but it didn’t cross the threshold of being too long. Personally, given the size of the town of Courtenay, I was surprised they had a Thai place at all. My home town of Prince George is triple the size and it also only has one. Given that, Kinaree could have surfed its ethnic distinction into lackluster food (which my local spot has been guilty of on occasion), so I am pleasantly impressed Kinaree is refusing to settle.

I would add more to this review, but I’m honestly running out of bed puns and am getting “Thai-ered.” HA HA!!

Food: 4/5 Service: 3.5/5 Presentation: 4/5 Value: ...

Food poisoning + Aside from the food poisoning, the Pad Krapow was also very mediocre and the Curry contained very little meat. This supports other reviews of Kinaree Thai.

Further details on food poisoning: My girlfriend and I ordered a Penang Curry and pad krapow takeaway on 17 October 2021 at Kinnaree Thai - Brick Lane at around 12am. We finished our food at around 1am then went to bed at 2am. At around 5am we were both woken by extreme stomach pain, nausea and vomiting. For the rest of the night and the following day the abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting continued. We felt very sick and exhausted, and also needed to take sick leave from work the following Monday. We recovered on Monday evening. Due to the extremely sudden onset and relatively fast resolution of the symptoms, the most likely explanation is that the cause of our symptoms was food poisoning from Kinaree Thai, due to preformed toxins - i.e. food likely left out, toxins produced by bacteria, bacteria killed on reheating, but toxins remained. (This is in contrast to getting bacterial infection or norovirus for example, which would have led to sickness for further days.) We had eaten different lunches and dinner earlier on the 17th (due to being out and about), which further supports this.

This is ENTIRELY the gross negligence of Kinaree thai as they should not serve food that is at such risk. Food that is cooked in the morning and reheated later should be stored in such a way to as not be conducive to bacterial production of toxins. If 12am is too late a time in the day, then they should not offer it on the menu. We still have the curry in the fridge, we have physical evidence that some mistake was made resulting in our sickness. We have already contacted a relevant solicitor to sue the restaurant, we will not settle unless we have received sufficient...

We were so looking forward to Thai food after not having it for quite some time. I should say that we are very familiar with Thai food at restaurants and through our Thai friends. Kinaree is, pure and simple, a rip-off. The portions are extremely small. We had four doughy skinny spring rolls for $7.50. Do not get the crab and cream cheese wontons. We got six burnt wontons with virtually no discernible filling. We were served coconut rice that no coconut taste. We thought that we had been mistakenly served plain rice but the owner/manager insisted that the rice was made with coconut milk and water. He was actually argumentative! We also had a noodle dish which he told us had vegetables. We asked for crisp noodles and we were served with about a 1 1/2 cups of super fine cellophane noodles that disintegrated into the sauce at the bottom of the plate. I think we had three pieces of broccoli, a bit of cauliflower and a couple of carrot slices. The drunken prawns were not deveined properly and once again, a very small portion. The owner is making a killing with those prices and portions. A very staple ingredient in Thai recipes is the papaya which he said could not be obtained. They have lots at Super Store. Nor could he find any tofu. We were treated...