123 Thai Food — Restaurant in Port Townsend

1-2-3 Thai Food is my latest 5-star recipient. It's highly unassuming from the outside and inside With only a few tables for customers who choose eat in, it's focus is on takeout (with its huge open kitchen and it appears to do it exceptionally well. My wife and I chose to eat here because of the uniformly high Yelp ratings. We were greeted by a very friendly man who patiently waited to take our orders and also explained more about some of the dishes. Yelper tip: If you order Thai Iced Tea, make sure you specify THAI ICED TEA. We just asked for iced tea and that's what we got--iced tea with ice cubes in a glass. We just went with the flow, vowing to order more clearly next time.

The food was served incredibly fast by the man at the counter as well as a second equally friendly --which meant that it was still hot on the plate. The Gyoza (pork pot stickers) was very good and came with yummy dipping sauce. My wife ordered the Pad See Iew with beef and it was also very good. Strangely it lacked the thinly sliced carrots that usually come with this dish although the menu stated they were included in the dish. But the flavors were there and it was abundantly served on a bed of steamed white rice. I ordered one of the specials, Thai BBQ Pork. Once again, 'abundance' is the operative word here with lots of tender, thinly sliced pork along with thinly sliced quartered cucumbers on a bed of steamed white rice. The pork was covered in the housemade red sauce (like a BBQ sauce which I guess gives the dish its name since the pork never came close to an actual BBQ grill). I primarily tasted five-spice in the seasoning blend but that's an easy one to get.

This came with the same dipping sauce as the Gyoza. I set out to reverse engineer it. I swear that one of the main ingredients was liquid hickory smoke along with soy sauce, white vinegar and come kind of hot chile pepper (some ingredient gave it some nice heat. But the important thing is that all the food looked great and was nicely presented on porcelain plates, one red and one blue. We were each given a fork. Too late did I look behind me and see the area where extra utensils and chopsticks were offered. Had I seen it earlier, I would've gotten a knife to slice the BBQ pork into smaller, more manageable slices. But wouldn't you know? After I told my wife I'd spotted where the eating utensils were she told me she'd already seen it. I think she enjoyed that moment...

What struck my wife and I was the friendliness of the staff, from the two men who served us to an older Asian lady who smiled and nodded at my wife to a young man working in the kitchen who nodded and smiled at me as I walked past. 1-2-3 Thai Food has genuinely earned all of its Best Of awards. And it certainly deserves a...

Nice take-out Thai place in PT. There is better Thai food in PT though if you’re more concerned about the food than convenience.

123 Thai does have tables, but they’re pretty sketchy and the place really isn’t intended as an eat-in restaurant.

The menus really need a refresh. And I literally mean the menus… They are taped to their large refrigerators and have all their prices taped over. You really don’t know how much anything costs. It’s weird.

Service is nice. The main guy who usually runs the front is super nice. They have a large crew working the completely open kitchen. Service is fairly quick though not “fast food” by any means.

So… the food: It’s very good but not great Thai food. It’s usually a touch soggy and just slightly bland compared to better sit-down restaurants. For example, their Pad Thai actually tastes and eats better when it’s heated up later or the next day. Straight from the restaurant though, it’s soggy. That said, the Pad Thai is really pretty good all things considered. Fried egg rolls are generic.

If you want quick Thai to take to the Pourhouse or home, then this place is fine. If you want high end Thai, there’s a better spot in town… just look it up (there are only two in PT).

Prices are not cheap though and are just slightly less than the full-service Thai restaurant that has better food. For value, it could be better.

All in all, this place has a big local following and is quite popular. Solid food with nice and quick service. Just know what to expect from this...

Unfortunately, I don't share other reviewers' positive opinions of this place. The food is severely westernized and may be called Thai-inspired but not really authentic Thai. Cucumber salad was mostly iceberg lettuce with some chopped overgrown gummy cucumber slices and a few wedges of unripe tomato. Dressing was basically pure corn syrup - promptly disposed of it and made my own at home. Massaman curry was thin and pale, painfully underseasoned and bland. Chicken in it was chewy, stringy and overcooked. Potatoes were undercooked and crunched a bit raw in the middle. Only flavor that was coming through was the coconut milk and a little bit of heat from the red pepper. No fish sauce or tamarind that I could detect. No cilantro garnish. Clearly they have tamed the beautiful symphony of flavor, a combination of sweet, sour, spicy, salty and umami, that real Thai food has. Maybe it works for most palates around here and that's why it gets the popular award year after year. High quality, however, it definitely is not. There are much better Thai options on the peninsula. Sabai Thai in Port Angeles and Sawadee Thai in Sequim are both much better than this. I won't be...