Speedboat Bar — Restaurant in London

I had a poor experience at Speedboat Bar and would not recommend it. Despite the buzz around this venue, my visit left much to be desired in terms of food quality, service, and overall ambience.

Venue & Atmosphere: The interior attempts to echo the feel of a lower-end Thai eatery, with dated décor including a worn carpeted staircase and nostalgic photos of Thai street food stalls and the Thai monarchy. There are about 16 tables inside, with a few more outside and upstairs. The upstairs section has more seating, a bar, a pool table, and two unisex toilets. Tables are crammed closely together, and the lack of sound insulation means you’re clearly overhearing conversations from adjacent tables. The ambience is chaotic and uncomfortable—particularly awkward as diners have to shift around when others leave due to space constraints. Best suited for a group of 4; smaller tables are impractical.

Drinks: A decent selection of Thai beers like Singha and Leo, alongside some interesting cocktails and Thai iced coffee/tea. This was probably the highlight of the visit.

Food (Tasting Menu): Yaowarat Road Set Menu (£36pp) Unfortunately, the food was a letdown across the board: • Chicken skin with Zaep seasoning: Overwhelmingly salty and spicy, with what tasted like a heavy dose of MSG. The skin was tough and the meat quality poor. • Chicken match with green mango: Unbalanced—cloyingly sweet and overly sour. The tamarind was overpowering. • Sweetcorn fritters: Extremely average and forgettable. • Stir-fried morning glory: Again, just average—nothing stood out. • Minced beef with basil: Poor quality meat in an overpowering sauce. • Crispy pork curry: This dish had a vaguely sweet rendang-like sauce but was let down by fatty, low-quality pork belly. It was hard to find much actual meat.Large amounts were wasted due to the large amounts of meat fat.

Value for Money: The tasting menu came to £72, but when pricing up the individual dishes, it amounted to about £63. This wouldn’t have mattered if the food quality had been good—but given the lack of balance in flavour, poor quality meat, no dessert included, and overall disappointing experience, it felt like poor value.

Service: Service was indifferent. Dishes were dropped at the table without explanation, and staff seemed disengaged. When we raised concerns about the inedible chicken skin, we were told nothing could be substituted as it was a set menu. The manager simply reiterated this, showing no flexibility or empathy. There was no effort to remedy the situation.

Overall: Below-average ambience, poor service, and subpar food with questionable meat quality and unbalanced flavours. Disappointing on almost every front. I’d advise avoiding this spot if you’re after a pleasant Thai dining...

The service was quite good, staffs are friendly. The restaurant had a nice colour and vibe, there are definitely some thought put into the design. We ordered a few dishes from the menu, the food quantity and portion size ate significant below average.

The mince beef and glass noodle are not very fresh, given the restaurant is very busy, I don’t quite understand why thats the case. Chicken skin very oily and feather still on. The sauces are tasty but nothing stand out from other good Thai restaurants.

From what I can see, this place is supposed to be some little food store in the back alleyway in Thailand, not fine dinning. There is the rustic feel to the decoration and the food quality match that quick street food style. But the portion size are like tapas. Price certainly do not match that. I don’t expect the quality to very high as they are not try to be Thai fine dinning, maybe it is their style to have small plate size, just reduce the price by 50% to 70% then everything will make sense. Otherwise it doesn’t much the expectation of what they are charging. For example, it is perfectly fine to serve cheap cut of steak for £10 or a really big fat ribeye steak for £80, but you can not charge £30 for a really small cheap cut.

The drinks are overpriced junk! Lowest quantity cocktails made with unknown sweater soft drink and little alcohol, again things you find on street in Thailand that’s suppose to dirty cheap which I am perfectly fine with! But they charge £10 for a ever so small glass are bad quality drink. In London, £25 cocktails are made with gold dust, you feel like god when you have one of those drinks. On the other hand, there are £5-6 ones are are not so good, but they cheap and a big glass of it. At Speedboat, poorest quantity for £10 and very small. If they change of the three problems, it wouldn’t be so bad.

All in all is was ok, I would say the food was very bad just very over priced. There are plenty other Thai restaurants around London and walking distances from here that serve much better quality and quantity...

Having been to Plaza Khao Gaeng (Speedboat's sister restaurant) I had high hopes for this place. I was not dissappointed.

We booked our table for 17:15 but ended up being almost 45min late, however the staff were very understanding and due to tables being available, they sat me and my friend down immediately.

Before doing anything the waiting staff offered tap water without us having to ask and a bottle with glasses was provided. We ordered some beers with this and then ordered our food.

We ordered some of the corn fritters as a small starter to share and I ordered the beef tongue and tendon while my friend ordered the stir fried baby aubergine both of us getting steamed rice to go with it.

The corn fritters arrived pretty quick and we were eager to tuck in. They had a wonderfully crispy texture and flavourful batter. The dip had a flavour similar to sriracha and worked perfectly with the fritters. There was nothing to complain about with this dish.

My beef and tendon curry was rich and delicious and the meat was soft with a melt in the mouth texture. The sauce was well seasoned and had a pleasantly spicy kick to it that didn't ruin the dish. The rice was cooked to perfection and went very well with the curry as it helped soak up all the curry sauce. Trying my friends aubergine it was probably some of the best tasting aubergine I've had outside of Indian cuisine. It was cooked and flavoured perfectly!

The interior of this place was amazing, similar to how they have done it at Plaza Khao Gaeng and you felt transported to an eatery in the hear of Bangkok. The waiting staff were quick and attentive, only one minor mistake was made where they forgot to bring our drinks after we ordered them but that was very quickly resolved. Also the 80s music really rounded out the vibe.

Would highly recommend going if you want not just great food but an authentic...