Bāntai (บ้านไทย) — Restaurant in Yuzawa

Visited Yuzawa for the first time and so glad to have stumbled upon Bantai. It’s been difficult to find tasty and authentic Thai food in Japan so this restaurant really exceeded my expectations in terms of flavor and taste. I find that the Japanese palette is sweeter and more mild when it comes to spice. But I ordered a spicy pad see ew and a papaya salad and both were plenty spicy and delicious!

If you peek into the kitchen you can see that the chef cooks with a big fire and wok, and this smoky flavor definitely is reflected in the cooked dishes like noodles and fried rice. The clerk shared that the chef had lived and studied in Thailand and it certainly shows in the food. If I lived around here I would be a regular.

The only downside is that since there was only one chef at the time, the dishes come out slowly. I would recommend this restaurant for people who are craving Thai and have some more...

The only reason this place doesn't get 1 star is because the food is undeniably really good.

But we've been sitting here for more than 2 hours and are still waiting for our food. It took 1h30 for our first dish (which was just a salad). Then the curry came out and we waited 15 minutes and no rice appeared. When I asked they said they were cooking it. 10 more minutes passed and I had to ask again. Turns out they put it on another table where others were eating, and so picked it up and gave us that same dish, and said "it's good it's still warm!".

This place is an absolute mess. Their 10 year old daughter is running around cleaning tables and honestly is the only person here who should be given a wage and ironically probably gets nothing.

Great food, but only come if you have a...

I love my fried rice. I always search for pineapple fried rice whenever I go to a thai restaurant, but unfortunately most in Japan don’t offer it. So I ordered their pork fried rice and it was the best thai fried rice I have had in Japan. It is a class above others in taste and the dish is very generous in portion size. Although the food took a little longer than I expected, the wait wasn’t as bad for us as others have written about. Some people wait an hour on line to have mediocre food in Japan, I WOULD wait an hour for this fried rice. Apparently the chef lived in Thailand. I would definitely...