Ruby of Siam — Restaurant in Highland Park

It was snowing outside, so we started with some warm Jasmine Tea and a delicious Tom Ka with tofu, its a coconut milk soup with lemongrass and mushrooms, delicately sweet and warm. The crab sticks were their take on crab rangoons, standard flavor but different in texture. Now one of the best items I’ve tried of that evening was the lime chicken. It was juicy, deep fried and flaky toppe with an insanely delicious zesty lime sauce. That chicken is a must order if you’re here, but then we move onto their local favorites like the crispy panang noodles, these are reduced pananang curry stir-fried crispy flat noodles, and were also warm and comforting, the local favorites are actually inspired by the customers, I thought that was unique. Somehting that caught my eye even more was Pad See Iew dish but it has a crying tiger steak in there adding another juicy flavor that paired surprisignly very welll with the flat noodles and sweet soy sauce based dish. Their spring rolls are small and made from scratch, I always appreciate the made from scratch aspect, and the food is good so it shows that hard work does pay off. I ordered their half roasted crispy half duck, and it was honestly the crispiest duck I’ve ever had. Served with a sweet plum sauce that was perfect for dipping the duck in there. The duck was fatty and juicy and paired with veggies and fried rice. Highly recommend ordering that duck, I know there’s too many good items on the menu. For dessert, we had the classic mango sticky rice, and the mango is the buttery manila mango that is in season until December and then they use a different mango until they’re in season again. the sticky rice was sweet, lightly milky and overall this is...

We ordered #1 Satay #65 Kao Pad Suparod, #23 Tomyum #58 Ruby Noodles from their menu. we liked the outer flavor of #1 but the chicken was not marinated. The rice tasted burnt and smelled burnt too. The noodles were too sweet and when we politely asked if they could mix something spicy and give it back the waitress thought we are asking for a new portion of the spicy version and gave us a pot of chilies flakes saying that’s how they make it spicy. What a joke. The same happened with the soup. They gave chilies sauce to add with soup to make it spicy. The whole drama about spiciness is because the waiter did not ask about how spicy we want the food to be which has never happened at any Asian restaurants for us. The restaurant smelled funny when we stepped in but later we got used to it I guess. The restroom was super clean though. Finally a major improvement they should make is that nobody notices when you walk in to the restaurant. There is no system in place to alert the staff when a customer walks in such as a bell or some internal signal. We had to walk all the way closer to the kitchen to bring their attention and ask for a table for two. The same happened to the next three customers who walked in after us. Not our first Asian...

When I go for Thai food, a buffet styled restaurant isn't usually near the top of my list. However when I recently was taken to Ruby of Siam by a coworker and was happily surprised with how much I enjoyed the food!

Even with the lunch rush there was enough seating for four of us to be able to get comfortable right away. On top of that, even with being packed it was quiet enough that we could all hear one another without straining. Something that I'm sure we can all attest to being difficult during the lunch rush in Chicago.

We went up to the buffet and first up was wings, very small but tasty Crab Rangoon, and a soup. After that was a variety of meals to choose from finalizing in a small dessert area. While none of what was being offered was overly spicy as I've come to experience with quite a few Thai dishes everything I tried was flavorful.

A variety of good food at a decent price makes this well worth the money for a lunch outing with co-workers. I'd highly recommend it and will most likely...