Thai Rama — Restaurant in England

My girlfriend and I went to the restaurant on a Saturday evening. When researching this restaurant, the first 'red flag' for me was that, from the customer feedback, it appears that Thai Rama do a Sunday buffet. In my experience, no decent Thai restaurant in the UK does buffets. The second 'red flag' was that their website looks shocking and the photographs of their food on the site didn't even look appetising.

However, we were drawn to this restaurant in the end because there are so, so many positive reviews about this place on both Google Reviews and Tripadvisor. If you are after a genuinely good/excellent Thai meal, then you won't get that at Thai Rama. It'll be, at best, just below average and should be at a price point around £10 per head.

The meal was thoroughly disappointing and the experience frustrating. We had a starter, 2 curry mains, a green tea, and 2 rice dishes and the total bill came to just under £45. For that price point, I wasn't expecting frozen, salty, sludgy 'Thai' food that took over an hour to arrive at our table.

Firstly, the positives:

1. Quick to serve us with a table, drinks and starter.
2. Interior decor was quite nice - they have definitely made an effort and the waitresses wore what I assume to be traditional Thai dresses.
3. The actual presentation of the starter was pleasant, with decorative vegetables etc.
4. The waitresses are friendly and helpful.

And now for the negatives:

1. It took us over 1 hour to be served our mains. It was a Saturday evening and most of the tables were taken, so it was relatively busy but waiting over 1 hour for our meals was obviously absurd.
2. The starter was breaded, buttered shrimp that had blatantly been frozen. It tasted bland.
3. The green curry I had was so terribly salty. The red curry my girlfriend had was so watery. Good Thai currys aren't like that.
4. The most obvious flaw in the quality of the food was the so called coconut rice. It didn't even look cooked properly and had what looked like some pseudo-coconut rice pudding poured onto it. I've eaten in 20+ Thai restaurants in the UK and I've never seen coconut rice presented in that fashion nor have I tasted coconut rice like that before. It was sub-par and frankly, embarrassing.

The whole experience was a complete write off. My biggest frustration though is that the unbelievably favourable reviews that this restaurant has on TripAdvisor and Google Reviews, because without those, I would never have bothered visiting this restaurant based on the 'buffet' red flag and the photos of the food on their website.

I can only conclude that those who have described this restaurant as 'one of the best Thai meals I have ever had' have simply not had much Thai. Also, I suspect that the high rating Thai Rama have received is more as a result of offering their Sunday buffet; which some customers seem to really gravitate towards.

If you want good / excellent Thai food, look at:

1. Siamais in Birmingham (although, judging by their recent Google reviews, their standards have dropped)
2. Nipa Thai in Lancaster Gate, London
3. Isan...

Hard to rate this one, do I rate it subjectively as Thai food in Colwall, or as Thai food overall objectively?

I'll go for objectively..

Overall the food is terrible, everything kind of tastes the same, with a sloppy starchy tasteless brown sauce.

There's no heat, maillard or fragrance in anything.

Thai food is famous for its beautiful melding of salty, spicy, sour and sweet. This had none of those.

The crispy aromatic duck was also bone dry and the pancakes all stuck into a clump.

The "3 chilli" which is their most spicy rating dish we ordered was remarked on by my 5 year old as not spicy at all.

The rice portions were way too big, I asked how big they were as we had 2 small kids and 3 adults and got no guidance at all from the waitress.

In contrast the protein portions were abysmally the Thai green curry was watery, thin, tasteless and had about 4 tiny bits of meat in it.

They also had no leafy green veges available, the mixed seasonal vegetables was a miserable mix of carrots and mushrooms cabbage and a bunch of stuff you never see in Thailand.

The hawkstone lager was the tastiest thing I had all night.

It's also not cheap at £80+ for the meal, had much more tastier food from a Malvern Chinese takeaway for £30+.

Will not return even though it's walking...

We have been coming to this thai restaurant for about 15 years now, and it is the best thai restaurant in the UK we have ever been to. We live 30 minutes away but still travel over as we love it so much.

The food is tasty, varied and simply divine. There is always a generous serving of meat or fish, the flavours are spot on and we are never left disappointed.

We have tried all the local thai restaurants in Worcester, Cheltenham, Pershore and Bromsgrove, but Thai Rama outshines them all by a country mile.

The staff are friendly and welcoming and now greet us like old friends which is always lovely, and the decor and atmosphere is warm, inviting, intimate and yet ornate at the same time.

The speed of service is never rushed or too slow either, it’s just right. Thai Rama simply can’t be beaten ❤️ plus, it’s...