Phranakhon Thai Tapas — Restaurant in Great Britain

Sadly our last visit was a little bit of a let down. A few of the dishes were not up to scratch.

The pork belly with salt chilli and garlic was dry, the pork belly pieces were uneven, some extremely thin and even the spring onions were not fresh. I ordered the duck spring rolls, which they didn't have (this is the second time they haven't had them), so in a rush I picked chicken satay thinking it's a fairly simple dish and hard to get wrong. Oh dear, it was the worst chicken satay I've ever had. It was flavourless and watery, it had a "microwaved" taste. My partner ordered the side of noodles with garlic oil, which if you can't read Thai then you won't know it is vermicelli noodles. They were supposed to come with garlic oil but they tasted pretty plain. £4, for a tiny portion of noodles.

On to the positives - The service was good. The crunchy wings and the battered prawns were delicious. So was the beef panang curry however, the curry was £11... for a tapas portion, no rice included. That is how much I'd expect a full sized portion to cost. It was nice, but it would have to be a gourmet experience to justify that price. A portion of sticky rice will also set you back £4. The prawn crackers are delicious but £5.50 is a lot.

For two people (5 tapas, 2 sides, one juice, prawn crackers) the bill came to over £70. Far far too expensive for the quality of food and the portion size. This place is kind of stuck in a weird limbo where they are doing "Thai tapas" but the prices are now closer to what you'd expect from mains. I have a lot of sympathy for the hospital industry and I do understand that prices have had to increase over the years, but I am not sure if I could justify making the trip back here now. The first time I went the food was was spectacular, but this time I felt...

Dreadful.

We arrived on time and it took 15 mins to get sat (despite there being an empty table we were asked to wait by… which we were eventually given).

I tried for 10 minutes to catch the eye of someone to take our order - we had waited 35 minutes and had not had any drinks or crackers. Other tables had. A lady who I assume was the manager came over but the table behind (who sat 10 mins after us) stopped her on their way to us and she took their order and then took a further 10 mins to get us.

Walk-ins were accepted through the evening despite the service being stretched and poor and two men who were drunk on arrival - and got worse - were served more alcohol (this shouldn’t have happened under the licensing guidelines. One of the drunk men ended up walking around interrupting people’s meals and being inappropriate - they weren’t asked to leave.

It was over an hour before we got our food, dishes were missing from our order. The food was delicious - but it was overshaded by everything else. We’d booked to table friends who were visiting out, and frankly, I was embarrassed by the end of the evening.

Absolute chaos. Spoke to the manager who apologised, and said ‘try us again, if we get it wrong again keep telling us’ and that was it. I was gobsmacked that the dreadful service wasn’t reflected in the bill after I complained. We’ve been to Phranakhon in York many times, along with Khao San Road and the predecessor Tah Chang, we are unlikely to return...

Went to Phranakhon Thai Tapas last night. The food was full of flavour, well cooked, great variety. The curried squid was a particular favourite. The tamarind dishes were perfectly balanced (not too sweet). The tempura batter was light and crispy. Lovely.

However, the service was very poor. Slow, inattentive. The waitress was particularly moody and disinterested. We wanted to order dessert but no-one attended to us for ages after we’d finished the meal. We had to get up three times from the table to ask for things like water, bill, dessert menu. By the time we’d asked to see the dessert menu the waitress told us the kitchen closed ten mins ago. V annoying.

It’s a shame because the decor was lovely and the food was some of the best Thai we’d had...