The Wild Orchid Thai Restaurant (New management) — Restaurant in Papakura

Wild Orchid is a Thai restaunt at 1/6 Averill Street in Papakura. It's been there for twenty-four years, but we found it only yesterday when we called in to get lunch. We had no idea what we had been missing for years!

Go there. Eat there. Damn, it's wonderful. Lunch will set you back about twenty dollars per person, so pricing in the middle range. We paid about 38 dollars for two meals. Two stunning, superb lunch meals.

Thai lunches usually are very good indeed, and now usually cost about fourteen to fifteen dollars per person in most suburban Thai restaurants. But Wild Orchid is a quantum jump above your usual Thai offering. Their food is in the top range, and well worth the price difference.

Today, my wife and I both chose Thai curries. She chose a chicken Panang, I a roast duck red curry with red grapes and pineapple. Both curries contained plentiful quantities of perfectly cooked vegetables, and were served in beautiful blue lidded bowls alongside plates of  fragrant jasmine rice.

How good? Great Thai curry sauces have the quality of gourmet soups. When I finished eating my meal, I raised the curry bowl with both hands and drained the remaining red curry sauce. There's only one other Thai restaurant in New Zealand whose curries are good enough to make me want to do that.

The service is as good as the food. A pure pleasure. They'll see us back again.

P.S. their website is www.wildorchidthai.co.nz

You can check out their lunch, evening and takeaway...

Very bad service. When we first arrived, the waitress said she had to clear some tables first so do we want to go away and come back, and we said we’d just wait - this took nearly ten minutes. And then twenty minutes to have our order taken. Fifteen minutes for our bottled ginger beer to arrive. And then another 50 minutes for her to come and say that it wasn’t possible to make one of the meals as we’d requested. We were waiting so long that the family at the next table were making jokes about how we’d be here until breakfast and that we were wasting away. About 8 people had come in and ordered and taken their take-away order away during this time. There was no one else in the restaurant waiting for their food for eat-in. After another 15 minutes of waiting we decided to just leave. We asked to have our drinks for free and there was some really awkward umming and ahhing on their part but they still made us pay after waiting all that time. Would...

I have been going to The Wild Orchid for 10 years and the food has been amazing. Last night we bought a takeaway and it was really awful. ENTREE: The spring roll never tasted like a spring roll, the chicken was dry and the sauce did not taste like a satay sauce. It had a horrible rubbery fish cake and the samosa was not cooked properly. MAINS: The chicken and cashew did not taste nice and it was drowning in a salty sauce. The sesame dish did not have any flavour and was also drowning in a salty sauce. RICE: The rice was jammed into a small container and when I finally managed to get it out it was so "gluggy" we could only consume a small amount. A very disappointing experience when we have had nothing but excellent meals in the past. Certainly not worth the money we paid, so will not be going back. For that meal we deserve a refund. A shame as we try to support...