Lily Fu's — Restaurant in Khlong Toei Nuea Subdistrict

APRIL 2024: I wrote a review about Lily Fu’s last year after we were in Thailand for about 6 weeks & discovered it! I wanted to leave another review so I am now adding on to my original review. Last year we must have gone about 10 times during that 6 week visit. We absolutely love it! This time we went to Thailand for 3 weeks & Lily Fu’s was our very first meal when we landed in Bangkok & our very last meal before we left Bangkok (plus one meal in between our visit). That says a lot! We always order the exact same thing- Chiang Mai noodles & the pork dumplings. The food is always delicious but if the staff wasn’t as good as they are we wouldn’t go back as often as we do. Hong and Paeuw are the best & truly feel like friends to us now. It was so sweet that they remembered us a year later. All the staff is always so nice and welcoming. We always sit at the bar and the guys behind the bar are great too! We also got to know Aie on this trip and she is also top notch! We will be back! We found out on that last day that Lily Fu’s has the same owner as another place we absolutely love in Bangkok- Iron Balls! No wonder we love them both so much. They are both gorgeously designed, with personable & excellent staff & great food/drink. Now we’re looking forward to also trying his other restaurant/bars on our next visit!

MAY 2023: We absolutely love this place!! We were in Bangkok for about 5 weeks and discovered Lily Fu’s at about the 2nd week. It is an Asian restaurant in the Mercure Hotel. We just happened to go in for lunch one day and enjoyed it so much that we must have gone there at least 10 times. The food is yummy! We had recently spent a week in Chiang Mai and fell in love with khao soi (northern Thai curry dish) that you don’t see in many Thai restaurants in the south so we ordered that along with some pork pan fried dumplings. Both were incredibly delicious! Every single time we went there we ordered those same 2 items because we loved them so much! The khao soi is a little spicy which we love but if you don’t like spicy just let them know. We went here for our final meal in Bangkok and on that day we were craving beef so we also got the basil fried rice with beef and the braised beef with curry and roti (I wish I could remember the exact dish names.). Both were very good but the basil fried rice with beef was especially good. Along with such incredible food, the staff is exceptional. Obviously with our repeat visits, we got to know a few of them pretty well but from our first visit they were very friendly and delivered excellent customer service. Phaew and Hong were particularly great. I actually teared up when we hugged them good-bye. The cocktails and the restaurant decor was also very nice. We will miss this restaurant for the food and the staff and are already looking forward to when we can return again!...

Had dinner at Lily Fu's on the first night of our trip and we kept wanting to go back. The atmosphere with their primary color lanterns, double-height space with a decked out bar on the inside and the cheeky message on the entry stairs had us hooked from the very first step. They were fully occupied outdoors so we were seated at an indoors table, which on a summer night in Bangkok would have been my choice regardless.

We had called beforehand to book a table just to be safe, but I wouldn't say it was necessary unless you want to sit outside.

The service was friendly and prompt. From our vantage point we had a great view of the enthusiastic mixologist, who put up a show for everyone that requested it. Great story material if you're into that kind of thing. My partner and I just had fun observing his routine.

We ordered some rice paper rolls for our appetisers that we dubbed as tasting very "Asian", which for us is just another way of saying "not the kind of Asian we get back home". For mains we ordered the crab fried rice, and the prawn pad Thai. The fried rice was scrumptious, packed with just enough crab flesh. The Pad Thai was delicious as well, not the best we've had, but by a close margin. The whole meal came out to be roughly 1500 baht, which seemed pretty reasonable for the experience.

We also ordered a drink each, with my partner getting his usual Schweppes, while I tried their lime and chilli martini, which they graciously made virgin upon my request. My drink was definitely the highlight of my meal. Sweet and zingy with just enough heat to feel dangerous, looking back, it was the perfect embodiment of...

We sort of ended up here unintentionally, and to be honest, I'm generally much more critical with places in this price range, particularly when they add ++ surcharges, but for the quality and experience we experienced here, I have no complaints.

We tried a variety of dishes, all of which are more like izakaya small plates rather than full sized meals. We tried gyozas, seabass with larb seasoning, tofu satay, and some kind of beef stirfry. The kids had some chicken nuggets. We loved everything except the tofu satay, but the peanut sauce served with that was great. Actually, the sauces were impressive, especially the Nam Jim Jaew served with the Seabass. Even my Thai wife said that might be the best Jim Jaew we've ever had (but the green seafood sauce, we think, was not homemade; it tasted very "packaged"). The Seabass itself was the highlight of the meal.

Would gladly return. Also, we went during happy hour, so beers were buy 1 get 1 free, but the server mentioned that after 7pm they do the same promotion on ALL drinks! So that would be more interesting, of course. I'm not sure if that was only for that particular night (Tuesday), or all nights, but might be worth...