Thai Arawan — Restaurant in Amarillo

Sunday nights can find us in a food desert here in Amarillo, but there are a few places open. Thai Arawan is one of them, and we chose it not just out of convenience, but also because we’ve had good experiences here in the past. This visit was no exception.

Youngest Daughter ordered the Khao Soi, which arrived in an enormous bowl. Essentially, it is a flavorful curry filled with egg noodles and bean sprouts, and topped with crispy egg noodles. She found the heat to be just to her liking, meaning not so spicy as to be impossible to eat, yet enough to remind her this was curry. There was so much in this serving that she was lucky to eat half of it; she gladly took the rest home for lunch the next day.

I ordered the Yellow Curry. I had noticed that the list of proteins did not contain tofu, yet there was a tofu dish elsewhere on the menu. So I asked if they would be so kind as to sub tofu for meat, which they gladly did. My order came with a huge serving of steamed rice as well.

But I just say that at first I was surprised that my dish was not at all hot on the spice scale. That, was because the vegetable at the top had merely been grazed by the curry sauce, and were cabbage, broccoli, and zucchini, tasty in their own right, but also a little out of place.

Silly me. My bad. I should have scooped down a little lower, because once I hit the bottom half of the dish, my mouth exploded in both flavor and heat. Oh my! This was some of the best curry I have ever had! I could not only taste it, I could feel it on my tongue. If you like curry, this is a great choice. It was hot, but not devastatingly so.

I’ll just say that my tongue tingled for about an hour. That’s the way I like it when I eat Thai. We’ll definitely...

Personally as a pregnant woman, I was a bit disappointed. I got the beef and broccoli with fried rice and a wonton soup. The beef could’ve used the slightest bit more cooking. Few pieces of my rice were undercooked. Overall I still ate it and it was okay. The wonton soup was like the slightest spicy, I didn’t mind that. Although it did smell like tires and the flavor was off. I definitely think you’d need to have an acquired taste for it. I did end up sending that back. They do not offer sweet tea BUT they do offer iced tea and sugar which wasn’t much of an issue for me. The staff was very kind and I felt so bad for sending back my soup. If you like sweeter cream chesse wontons, then these are definitely for you! The egg rolls tasted a bit like..alcohol? I think it might’ve been the ginger or something in it. But overall the place seems pretty clean, good service. Their menu option as of right now is to use a QR scanner, which if you have an iPhone- super useful, if you do not have an iPhone you could always download a free app. I’d say they were pretty covid safe. As for the details of the restaurant it is quite open and the coy fish are very pretty, though in a small tank. They have gorgeous photos/paintings of the Asian culture (i think. I dont know specifics.) I’d say it’s a pretty great place to go...but personally my palette was...

🚨Disclaimer: this review is not meant to harm the business. I would love to see them succeed and believe they are trying very hard to be a successful business. This review is meant to help them know how they can improve, and what customers can expect.

We sat down to eat and the waitress was VERY nice. 5 stars here.

However…

As we were sitting down, I saw a cockroach crawl up from a booth, crawl over to where my 4 year-old daughter was, and then begin crawling around our feet. I killed it with my shoe, but was pretty grossed out after that.

My wife and I ordered green curry and pad-kee-mao.

It looked decent, but when we bit into it, it had a rotten taste. This was most likely because they over seasoned it with fish sauce, which overpowered everything.

However…

When we told the waitress we couldn’t eat the food, she said we would not have to pay, so we are VERY thankful for them being courteous in that way! 5 stars...