Pattaya Restaurant — Restaurant in Scotland

I am a restaurant reviewer and recently ate a meal here at the Pattaya in Elgin. I am safe in stating that it was the worst meal I have ever eaten in my life! I ordered a prawn starter, priced at £7.20, it arrived, I got 4 small prawns that were tasteless and bland. For Main course I ate a Thai chicken curry. It was again totally bland and extremely watery in consistency. It was basically Thai paste watered down in hot water, with added plain vegetables and small pieces of chicken, all the ingredients had obviously not been cooked as a recipe or together to take on flavours from each other, as one would cook a curry in a pot adding ingredients one at a time to allow for flavours to enrich. It was basically food in hot water, not creamy or rich. I ordered egg fried rice to accompany the curry, it had the minutest microscopic pieces of what I tasted as powdered egg, nor had the rice been fried whatsoever. As far as I could see it was plain rice with added egg powder stirred into it, and had never been near a wok at all! The noodles (as a side) never arrived and trying to attract the single waiters attention to inform him of this was a waste of time. I was forced to tell the waiter to remove the cost of the none existent noodles from the bill, otherwise I know I would have paid for them.

The owners of this restaurant have lost any love they ever had for Thai cooking, this restaurant is an exercise in how to make a fast buck, and hang pleasing the customer, the objective is their bottom line it seems. I am sorry to say that as a food and restaurant reviewer I cannot recommend The Elgin Pattaya Restaurant at all.

Cooking Thai food is an art to same degree, it should be cooked with love and with dedication, to enhance flavours, making sure they are heightened, and as much thought as possible has gone into its cuisine and finishing off as a meal fit to eat and enjoy. If you like plain hot water with added Thai paste stirred in, with plain vegetables thrown in, as an after thought, then Pattaya is your place to go. However, for me this is not cooking, the cook lost his love of Thai ingredients years ago. What he does like is his bottom line. DON'T EAT HERE! Not if you like genuine Thai food... this is NOT it! ...

Last time I was here the service was very slow but the food was good, so I thought I would give it a second chance. After sitting down, we were asked to move table 5 minutes later. It took 3 attempts to order food because the inexperienced teenager couldn’t operate the iPad. After an hour and a half our starters arrived, my friend had 3 tiny morsels of Dim Sums which were not worth the price. After 2 hours our food finally came. I asked for clarification about what dish had just been brought, and a man who we hadn’t seen all night appeared out of nowhere, angrily barked the name of the dish at me, and in the process of trying to reach over the table to hand me the food he knocked my friends meal on the floor. The man then stormed away without apologising. They completely forgot one of our Pad Thai and it took another 20 minutes to arrive. None of the food was worth the wait, and my friends prawns had a weird texture and taste as if they had been frozen. We did get a decent discount in the end, which made up for something. Unfortunately I won’t be...

Food: Easy 5/5. The curry was quite good and an excellent match for the coconut rice. All members of the group had nothing but positive things to say. One, who was quite well traveled, remarked that the Wonton soup was the best he'd ever had.

Service: 4/5 - Polite and professional, but had minor mix ups and botched an order entirely (even after being specific and repeating it several times). For clarity, it was a simple order request and nothing excessive or overly specific. So- the service is good, but be very, very, VERY, clear if making any changes to food items ordered.

Prices were fair. It's up to the group to split the bill as needed. They have Tiger beer, but expect to pay £4 per bottle.

The dining area and restroom were clean and well kept. The restrooms are accessed directly from the dining area.

Overall, I'd certainly eat here again and definitely...