THE HOUSE by Ginger — Restaurant in Chiang Mai Province

THE HOUSE by Ginger is incredible! I just stumbled across it by chance when looking at Google Maps and decided to visit for lunch today. When I arrived, it was set back in a secluded area of the city, and there were stickers showing Michelin stars from 2020, 2021 and 2022! I was totally not expecting that, so right away I had high hopes.

Walking in, you’re taken back to an older time with fancy chairs, table settings and decorations - all very elegant and making you feel super fancy!

The food and drinks were AMAZING! We got two of the mocktails - one of them even had smoke inside so when it was brought to our table, it was smoking! It was so cool and even gave a smoky flavor to the drink which elevated it to a whole new level! The other one had an egg white inside it and rose flavor. I’m not sure what the name was, but it was awesome too. Both drinks - highly recommend. We ordered many different food items - the Thai mixed appetizer platter is a must-try, and all the other dishes were exceptional as well. Sweet and sour banana flower dish, slow-cooked beef with lime and coconut, curries, noodle dishes, fried rice dishes and much more. You really can’t go wrong here. Try dishes marked with a red symbol on their menu - they’re their signature dishes!

An added bonus that I read online: everything is made from scratch, every ingredient used is organic and no MSG is added! So if something tastes really good, it’s not enhanced by MSG in any way - that’s really how good it is! Every dish (even fried dishes) somehow tasted lighter than what you’d get at a typical restaurant, so if you’re wanting a meal that leaves you feeling good about what you ate, this fits perfectly.

We will definitely be returning! An incredible restaurant we just found by chance that ended up being one of our favorite Thai...

While I overall enjoyed my dinner here tonight, we ended up only enjoying less than 50% of the items we ordered; and when you’re paying 2-4x the cost compared to most other restaurants in Chiang Mai, you hope for a higher win rate.

What we liked:

The house ginger shake - at first sip we weren’t sure we liked it as it seemed overpowering - but after a quick stir and sit for a bit for the flavors to come together it became delicious. Very refreshing.

Fried lotus flower appetizer - this is honestly delicious. The fry is light and perfect, the savory mango sauce so delicious that my bf who normally doesn’t like sauces was double dipping.

Khao Soy Gai - now this was worth coming alone. This is probably better than Khao Soi Maesai and a larger portion - but again, 4x the price. Still, soooo gooddddd. The flavor profile of the broth was amazing.

What we didn’t like:

Juicy guava - room temp / def not chilled enough and probably a little too savory for my preference.

Mango spring rolls - the mango, while the best tasting, most perfectly ripe and sweet mango we’ve ever had - over powered every other flavor. I’m just not sure mango works inside a spring roll with delicate shrimp and veggie flavors.

Lamb curry - the lamb itself was not tender, I’d even say tough. The curry is fine, but not as deep and flavorful as I’ve come to appreciate in Thai and Indian curries. Overall we didn’t bother eating half the dish.

Mango sticky rice - just wasn’t as good as many of the ones we tried elsewhere. Most frustratingly, they don’t cut the mango completely from the skin - so getting it off was a challenge. The mango itself wasn’t as ripe and sweet as we’ve had all week either - even though it is...

Speaking as a well-travelled Asian American, this restaurant caters to the typical westerner palate. Would not recommend if you’re looking for an upscale authentic Thai restaurant experience.

Food flavors are too sweet and not spicy. For appetizer, we had the salmon carpaccio salad, which was quite salty and not spicy at all (rate 3.5/5). My entree was the grilled New Zealand beef and cooked medium rare as instructed (rate 5/5). My wife had the duck curry dish, which had too much going on (too many vegetables which seemed like they were cooked together with the sauce, which resulted in a watered down curry base), and the duck was sliced so thin, it was as if she was eating beef jerky (rate 0/5). We sent it back and kindly made the comment about how dry it was. As a result, the restaurant kindly removed the dish from our final bill.

In terms of service, we felt discriminated, as our service was lackluster and our waitress not even attentive, to which we had to waive her down a number of times i.e. waiting on the waitress for chopsticks for over 10 minutes when the restaurant was not busy, watching our waitress tend to other “westerners” with high attention - mind you we were the only non-white people in the restaurant at the time, empty water bottles, plates, and used napkins piling up on our table and not cleared.

It was almost like eating at an “upscale” (overpriced) Thai restaurant back in NYC. Perhaps this was a a one-off instance. Nonetheless, this was our...