SukhoThai Restaurant — Restaurant in Watsonville

I came here based on the previous reviews and this place seem like really well received restaurant so I gave it a try since I just started working in the area. My first time with this restaurant and the first impression was not good for me. May be it's one time off thing so I'll definitely come back to give more evaluation.

Ordering system: I used online order which is quick and easy. I really like that.

Food: I ordered laab moo (pork) which is ground pork salad and sticky rice (if it weren't so expensive I would order som tum to finish the Thai classic combo...hint hint lunch special maybe?). Don't let the word salad fools you. It's not plate full of greens. It's cooked grounded pork tossed in chili and lime sauce, a dish in North Eastern region of Thailand and a very popular comfort food for many Thai people all over the country. As a Thai person, I expected it to be more authentic, I understand the few ingredients where it can be hard to obtain due to the location. The main issue I have is the flavor profile. Laab should have profiles of lime sourness, salty from fish sauce, slight sweetness from palm sugar and spicy from bird eye chili. I have requested for level 5 spicy and it wasn't hot at all. Most of the heat were put off by overwhelmingly sweetness and heavy on fish sauce. Fish sauce already have overwhelming flavor and can overtake other ingredients. I feel that there might have been some mistake and the cook tried to compensate to balance the flavor by adding more sweetness into the dish. What make it feel like it's not laab is the lack of lime juice. The sourness of it was not present. The minor issue is the omitting roasted rice in laab. That gives the dish a slight toasty and smoky profile to the dish. It's commonly use in laab and nam tok. Most other Thai restaurant I have gone to using in their dishes. It is common ingredient and easy to make which I think it shouldn't omit especially it's not exotic ingredients that would put off foreigner. I couldn't really care for the shredded carrots but it was a nice touch and it would complement better if the lime juice was there. I love the side of romaine lettuce, laab is really well together with fresh green with high water content like lettuce.

I'll definitely give them a try again because I don't believe to judge their wholesome with one experience. Hopefully, please don't take this too offensive and make my next dish way too spicy to burn my butt off. I have few more dishes that I use to benchmark Thai food which I'll be coming back for sure. I would like to get neau nam tok and pad khee mao in the future.

Overall experience would be 3 stars, but I want to focus on the dish so giving it 2 stars to be consistence with Yelp review where they consider 2 stars as "could've been better" and 3 stars is "A-Ok". Generally, I don't like 5 stars system since there are a lot to factors. My 10 rating scale would be 6/10 where the online ordering and customer handling is...

We eat quite a bit of Thai and it can vary quite a bit from place to place. Some places can make a spicy dish and others seem like they are lacking the right ingredients to make the proper spice/heat levels.

Sukhothai made us some flavorful dishes with heat that wasn't too overpowering to the point of being spicy without flavor. We had larb, Pad see ewe, and some apps. The larb was spicy with good flavor, the rice noodles were not ordered spicy but came without bean sprouts in it (a + in my book). Not much filler in the dish. The apps were chicken Satay and fried tofu. Both were good. Overall a good meal with a happy...

This is a rare gem of a Thai restaurant for Santa Cruz County. The owner/chef was trained by one of the best Thai chef's in all of Santa Cruz when he worked at Star of Siam in Soquel (which btw does not have the same owners anymore). Now with his wife and his brother (one of the waiters) they run this little hidden diamond in the rough. You will not be disappointed. My husband and I were wondering what happened to them and here they are, tucked away in the back of a strip mall. We are SO delighted to have them in our neck of the woods again! BEST THAI FOOD AROUND! GOOD...