Thai Avenue Restaurant — Restaurant in Edmonton

As Gordon Ramsay says; “what a shame”.

Having lived in Thailand for six years, my wife and I loved this place when we discovered it in 2022. It’s owned by a Thai and we saw him there tonight so it hasn’t changed ownership. Unfortunately, what was excellent and relatively authentic somehow morphed into flavorless average food that now skimps on needed ingredients and worse than that, adds others to fill the plate.

The best of our dishes was the som tum which still retained a flavorful and somewhat authentic sauce. But a cardinal mistake is adding iceberg lettuce. Unheard of in Thai food and sadly cheap. Also lacked enough tomatoes and long beans. And the limes were just the rind.

We have always ordered shrimp Pad Thai which in the past was almost as good as in Chiang Mai or Bangkok. Obviously affected by inflation and perhaps trying to keep prices low, the recipe changed immensely. There was about half of one green onion, perhaps three bean sprouts and the sauce became some version of flavorless bland Chinese style cooking. And way too many carrots on top; peanut garnishing lacked flavor and is also too small.

And another cardinal sin; a giant lemon. You should never ever use lemon in Thai food. It has to be a lime. The shrimp were very small and not sweet and the tofu pieces were so minuscule we could hardly find them. I assume there was some egg but it wasn’t really visible. The dish is really just some brownish noodles now with minimal ingredients. Very disappointing and surprising. We made our own Pad Thai the other night with Blue Dragon mix which is from Thailand as it tasted better which is very sad.

The final dish was red curry with beef and pineapple. Keeping with the pattern of making mistakes to save money in every dish, they inundate it with broccoli which is not used in Thai food. There was literally one piece of a half red pepper and some thinly sliced carrots. The beef was scarce and a low grade of thinly sliced flank like you’d get in a Chinese strip mall place. The curry itself was watered down compared to what it used to be, not remotely spicy and almost flavorless. Also amazingly disappointing compared to what this dish once was. The coconut rice is the best part but at $4.50, that’s getting ridiculous for rice.

We live 40 km away in the other side of town and the drive used to be well worth it. Sadly, as is the case with so many restaurants struggling in a tariff dominated bad economy, the quality isn’t there any more so on tonight’s episode, Thai Avenue is leaving our Master...

I would not recommend this place for Thai food at this moment unless they improve immensely.

I will preface this review that I did reach out to the business before writing this as I rarely give a 1 star review and while they were sorry they were not up to standard they asked if there were other Thai restaurants in the city that I felt were, for them to check out to compare, which to me seemed a little inappropriate. If you are going to open up your own Thai restaurant the hope is you have already refined your own recipes to stand out over similar restaurants.

I’ll start with the good. Our party of 3 was seated fast on a Saturday evening and staff were friendly gave us plenty of time to look at the menu. We decided to first order 2 appetizers, the chicken satay and calamari. The chicken satay, while the flavour and spices was ok, it was overcooked and on the verge of becoming very dry as some parts were already quite chewy. The peanut sauce it came with was good.

Now this is where it started to become disappointing. The calamari that is pictured on their menu is not what you will receive. What you will receive is basically frozen calamari rings that is heavily breaded and we received UNCOOKED food as it was still cold in the middle. They took it back and were apologetic and did not charge us for the calamari. We should have left but thought maybe it was a one off. At that point we decided to order the main courses, chicken pad thai and panang curry. When we received the pad thai, it didn’t even look like the correct noodles was used and it tasted off. Not at all like traditional pad thai flavours, you couldn’t get the tamarind, fish, or chili sauce flavours. It was just overall not what pad thai should taste like, not to mention that the chicken in the pad thai had zero flavour and was rubbery, possibly just boiled or overcooked chicken. Price per portion was not worth it either. Just a very disappointing experience one after the other that we decided to just cancel the panang curry order we put in and settle the bill and leave.

I have a hard time giving such a negative review as maybe we were ordering wrong items but pad thai; I assume, would be a popular dish amongst most Thai restaurants. I really hope they can improve upon their quality and taste of the food they are serving. They seem like they...

What a gem in the north. If you are looking for a beautiful date night, with the right mood and food, you have to check them out. From the moment you walk in the place is stunning and so well put together. The server was very welcoming and always checking on us if we needed anything. We went here for a date night and all in it was just below $100 for starter, main and dessert with a drink so I think it is priced very reasonably. My husband started with a drink called Thai Ave pink milk which he said was enjoyable. We had the coconut curry soup( we ordered large but I think a regular would have worked for both of us as we also ordered the chicken Thai skewers with peanut sauce, definitely get it if you love peanut butter ) If you are ordering one starter to share, then the large makes sense to share. We then ordered pad Thai and pad kee mow. Both were good but the pad Thai was better. The flavour was definitely on point. We then had dessert and ordered the fried Bana with coconut ice cream and the cake pudding. To be honest I wasn't a fan of the cake pudding. It was abit heavy on the egg but still delicious. I was definitely a fan of the icecream and fried banana but two things to note. They could definitely put more pieces of fried Banana for the price you pay and the icecream portion could be slightly smaller. It looked off balance. If there was 6 pieces of fried banana and one scoop of icecream, it would have been much better of a serving because while you are eating it, the friend Banana is done so quick and there is too much ice cream leftover. That's again on my opinion so the restaurant perhaps can change that to make the portion more balanced. Overall the food, the ambiance and the service was wonderful. It's definitely a gem of a restaurant in the Northside so please check it out. You won't be disappointed. Let me know what you think!

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