Thonglor Express — Restaurant in London

Delicious food, and cute place to sit in. Highly recommend.

I wanted to check out the buffet option after seeing lots on social media. The buffet is great but not as hyped up as influencers may make it look. Portion size is medium/small but well worth the price (currently £12). You get a bowl of rice, with your curry choices on top, a fried egg or a spring roll. There were about 6 curry options, most were beef, fish or chicken and two Veggie options (veg green curry and mixed vegetables).

It also seems that when the buffet is on, they don't offer meals from the a la carte menu.

We arrived a little early for the buffet and wanted some different veg options so we ordered a la carte instead. The panang curry (tofu & veg) was amazing!! Spring rolls were delicious, fresh and piping hot. The fried eggs were a bit cold off the buffet bar (and at £2 per egg it would have been nice to have them cooked fresh for our meal), but other than that no complaints!

The place gets full at buffet time so once you've eaten you generally have to move on pretty quickly to let others sit and eat.

The staff were really lovely and the food is really...

Food: For £13.50 this is amazing value and honestly, this is one of the best places you can go to in Central London whilst on a budget! They give you one bowl that you can take with you to the counter where they fill it up with all kinds of different types of meats such as chicken, pork and vegetarian and even vegan curries which create a nice sense of variety and accommodate all kinds of diners. I regret not taking any pictures, but other reviews have already!

Service: They are really quick and precise with making sure that we all get seats and get paid so that we can spend an hour with the food. They are quick but also the people serving the food have a nice welcoming demeanor which makes it a nice extra bonus! They also had the tough task of accommodating 7 diners out of the blue but they did excellently at that.

Atmosphere: It's really hustle and bustle. On a Sunday afternoon at around 14:30 when we went in for the buffet, there were a lot of customers and many of which appeared to be having a great time!

Thonglor Express is one that is not to be missed if you are wanting to eat your fill and...

Although they say they open at 11.45am, the full range of curry/vegetable/meat dishes for the rice is usually not ready at this time, but closer to noon instead. Because of this I would recommend visiting only from noon as they wouldn’t be prepared before that and your choice of dishes are significantly more limited.

While the atmosphere is no-frills (which isn’t a problem), being located off Tottenham Court Rd, it is quite common for “interesting” characters to wander their way into the store, and the staff seem to generally tolerate these patrons even if they might make most other customers uncomfortable. I would say that this has happened multiple times in my visits here and soured my experience on these occasions, so do be wary of that. I do hope the staff can be firmer in keeping the restaurant a safe and comfortable space.

Finally, I would say that the service quality among the staff is quite uneven. The lady boss seems to prefer to point nonverbally at the signs or menus in the restaurant to communicate with customers rather than speaking to them directly, which comes off as quite cold...