Palms Thai Restaurant — Restaurant in Los Angeles

If you're with a large group of people and looking for a relatively cheap place to eat, look no further - Palms Thai is the location for you! This Thai restaurant is pretty enormous, with tons of tables that can be combined to make even larger tables if needed. Think of the busy Vietnamese restaurants where workers are in and out with bowls of pho within minutes ... that is pretty much how Palms operates as well.

Located on Hollywood Blvd, Palms is open until 12 AM every single night to satisfy your late night cravings. Parking is not the easiest since it's Hollywood, but they do provide you with a parking garage where you can either valet or self parking for a minimum price. The interior is filled with pretty ornate décor - from an Elvis statue to a stage where customers can sing karaoke - you'll be pretty impressed.

My friends and I stopped by to grab dinner before heading to watch a show. No wait despite the many parties already dining in the restaurant - we were seated quickly and given menus and water.

While they serve a variety of items, my friends stuck with the basic dishes that they knew and enjoyed.

Bowl of coconut soup with chicken: $8.49 this was able to serve all 4 of us, with a bit leftover. I was craving the tangy Tom Yum soup, and this definitely hit the spot! It was still a bit acidic-y, but the sweetness from the coconut gave it an extra kick. Very bold flavors and lots of ingredients - it was a great way to start the meal.

Spicy beef salad: $9.25 while this is not the cheapest price for a salad, I actually really loved this dish! I think it was actually my favorite! There was a very generous portion of grilled beef, and the spicy lime juice really piqued my appetite. Loved the lightness of the salad and all the ingredients were really fresh that it managed to satisfy our appetites yet still keep us wanting a bit more.

Pad Thai with pork: $8.99 (some items give you the option of choosing beef, pork, chicken, steamed tofu, or fried tofu, so we went with pork). I'm not the biggest pad Thai fan, but I really liked the flavors in this dish. Not too oily, good ratio of ingredients and noodles, and the portion size was pretty on point. Highly recommend if you're searching for a safer Thai dish.

Green curry: $8.99 - you can choose your meat for this dish, so I believe we went with chicken. We also ordered rice on the side because ... you really can't eat curry without rice. Curry was not spicy at all - even a bit on the sweeter side. Loved the flavors of the green curry and coconut milk. Good amount of ingredients in the curry as well, and the price point is not bad at all!

My friend also ordered the Thai iced tea smoothie: $3.99 - if you're a fan of the sweetness of Thai tea, I would suggest skipping this smoothie and going with the Thai tea (it's cheaper, too!). This drink is blended up and the ice really dilutes the sweetness. I enjoyed the frothiness, but I didn't get much flavor from the smoothie.

What's even better is that Palms Thai offers lunch specials EVERY single day of the week from 11AM-5PM. Specific items are cut down a few bucks to save you some money.

tl;dr - Highly recommend if you're in the area and looking for a bite to eat. With the affordable prices, tasty selections, and fast service (and semi-easy parking), what's not to love...

Palms Thai was a experience. I love my Pad Thai. So going to what our hotel concierge recommended as the spot where all her foodie friends go was a no brainer. We arrived and found the valet for only $2.50, easily the cheapest valet anywhere in LA, and indeed cheaper then most places in other cities. Once we arrived we were seated quickly at the end of a long table with other people in various stages of their meal. We ordered a bowl (not a pot, a pot is way big) of the coconut soup with tofu. It came out very quickly along with two cold Thai beers. The soup was enough for 4 people, and was full of mushrooms, cilantro, tofu*, green onions and all sorts of other spices. The soup tasted good enough, if not a bit overpowering. It seemed like the spicy flavor was too much like buffalo sauce and not some exotic pepper artfully cooked. Also large chunks of ginger, garlic, and lemon grass were in the soup and were quite uneatable. Once you picked those out you were good to go. For mains I got a helping of Pad Thai with fried tofu, and had it cooked with medium heat. I really enjoy my spicy food, but am not a fan of blazing hot food. Medium was not hot enough for me, and I would have gone up one more step to hot if it had it to do again. The servings are large, good for two people to share, or one very hungry yelper to eat alone. I consumed the strangely sweet pad thai with mounds of fresh sprouts, and a good helping of shaved carrot. This meal was enjoyed to the sounds of Neal Diamond, and Elvis Presley who has come back to life as a short Thai man crooning on stage in full getup just a few feet from my dinner! I will give Palm Thai 3 stars. It was good food, but nothing earth shattering. The seating was a bit like eating at a cafeteria with those long tables. Service was quick yes, but quick to a fault and I felt a bit rushed. Elvis, while very fun, was a bit distracting to the meal. If you are looking for a cheap place to get quick Thai with friends then this will do nicely and I'll be back for just that reason. If you want a authentic meal, in a traditional setting then look elsewhere. *Those new to my reviews might mistake my love for tofu to mean im a hippy, flower child, who doesn't eat meat and spends his days morning over the injustices done to the endangered Caribbean Narwhal. Not true, in fact Thai maybe be the only cuisine that I enjoy with these tasteless little blocks. I didn't want my affinity for tofu in these dishes to scare off some of my more...

one of the worst dining experiences i've ever had.

Food was poor quality, and had been clearly reheated. Staff was inattentive, rude, and condescending

We were sat fairly quickly but it went down from there. I asked if I could simply substitute broccoli on my entre with rice and they said no. I asked if I could get it on the side " No. We don't do it on the side". we ordered deep fried wontons which came with around a teaspoon of filling . They were extremely underwhelming. We asked if this was normal and the waitress said it was. Wish I knew that before I ordered.

When I got my Beef, I bit in to the first piece which was a little more tough and chewy than I expected, and when I took the second bite it was cold... I ate a few more pieces, some were warm, some were colder than room temp, which makes me think they had the beef refrigerated and they simply reheated it.

When I brought this up, they immediately became confrontational telling me they can take it and warm it up for me " This would be against health codes to take already delivered food back into the kitchen.

I said I didn't want it warmed up because it would just be chewy reheated beef, I asked if I could have a substitution, or have it taken off my bill, and the manager said " we do not accept returns on food"

Having worked in the food industry i've never heard of a restaurant adopt this policy. They refused to take it off my bill and even went as far as to tell me " We delivered the food, we know it was hot, and we made it fresh." they became rude and confrontational so I took the check and left. I'm pretty furious I spent $30 on food that was borderline inedible. screw this place and...