Fern Forest Cafe — Restaurant in Chiang Mai Province

March 2018 The vibe: gorgeously tropical and elegant, soft-jazz fills the air, not too loud in the outdoor patio. It's a breezy day and soothing cooling mist feels great, on this end of hot March afternoon. There are bamboo white umbrellas over each table. It is easy to be outside here in the noon sun. There is a koi pond off to the side. It is really quite beautiful.

Menu prices are much higher than most, geared towards more affluent tourists and with lots of American menu options.

The servers, albeit very polite, had much difficulty helping me with basic questions. I have a dairy allergy so I can rarely order if the menu item list ingredients that include “etc."

I ordered a garden salad for 155 baht. Salad arrived looking fresh, but sparse. A nice sized beautiful white ceramic bowl with a couple of small pieces of chicken and an obvious absence of the promised crunchy bacon, which was the selling point for me.

It was mostly a basic simple green leaf lettuce salad, a single slice of thin radish, a couple of tiny baby tomatoes, a bit of raddichio and a small boiled egg.

Delicious oil dressing, quite perfect actually and overall very clean tasting ingredients. I enjoyed it. They eventually brought me a tiny amount of crumbled bacon, but only after I pointed it out twice and halfway through my lunch.

Maybe you need to order one of the 200baht items to get better service. I think I stressed them as the server stopped checking my water glass until I took my final bite. And yes, this is the kind of place that watches over your water.

With the featured dessert of mango sticky rice for 155 baht, (30-80 most everywhere else) I could have guessed this was $$$ and maybe a risk for people that expect value when having a fancier lunch.

I would consider returning just for tea or smoothie or if I want a 200 + baht lunch which I s really still quite cheap but not practical for those of us traveling for months. The ambience is quite lovely, actually stunning.

Update (Back in Chiang Mai!)

I got quite sick after eating here. The opposite of the usual runs and I had to go to the hospital for tests and drugs. Took a week to recover. I was mostly bedridden. It was my only and first meal of the day. Intense nausea and horrific cramps with no relief. So I won’t ever order raw food (salad) here again or probably any food. The microbes were incompatible with USA belly. Maybe a cup of tea to enjoy the garden. But as others have mentioned the service...

A friend recommended this place. I’ve been three times so far. For the first visit I sat inside (no space outside) and ordered the recommended mushroom crepe and the fancy apple drink. Loved it! The second time I sat outside and had the coconut cream pie and a coffee. Worth the experience. The third time I brought my wife and we sat outside. We didn’t realize they closed at 6pm, so we arrived at 5:20pm and had to get our orders in before the kitchen closed at 5:40pm. So, plan your visit accordingly. My wife and I ordered the spring rolls, the pineapple fried rice, pasta carbonara, a special chocolate drink, a passion fruit drink, a piece of banoff pie, and a piece of coconut cream pie. We were very hungry, so we managed to eat all of it :-) The fried rice was worth the experience, but I wouldn’t order it again. The banoff pie was good but a bit of a disappointment. It was 75% banana and didn’t match the menu picture. My wife loved the chocolate drink and carbonara.

Overall verdict. Fern Forest has a wonderful atmosphere inside and out. It’s just a nice place, period. There are plenty of western and Thai food options, and it seems you can’t go wrong with anything you order. There’s a reason tons of farangs are here at all times of the day. It’s a solid choice for a meal or a coffee and dessert. Pics are from my...

Served with a Side Attitude!!!

I’m a regular customer here and usually enjoy visiting, but I had a very upsetting experience today (26-4-2025) One of the supervisors or waitress I am not sure (wearing a white shirt, short hair ), usually standing at the entrance greeting customers ) treated us extremely badly. After waiting almost an hour, I went to ask about our order — and they couldn't even find our order. Instead of apologizing for forgetting it, the supervisor (white shirt, short hair) just told us we had to wait another 20 minutes with the upset face even though she saw us waiting— without any apology or explanation for forgetting our order. But then they suddenly brought the food after only 5 minutes for four people, and it was obvious the food had been sitting in the kitchen for a long time — it was cold and tasted bad. When they served the food, the girl put the plates down very loudly with an upset face, and even when I said "thank you," she didn’t even respond.

It made me feel very uncomfortable and disrespected — like we were being discriminated against, even though we didn’t do anything wrong. I truly hope the management will take this seriously because customers deserve to be treated with basic respect, especially regulars who...