Max’s Thai: Wallington, London

Max’s Thai

Date of Visit: 7^th June 2013

Ambience

Typical of small Thai restaurants, this place was filled with Thai themed ornaments and wall paintings, along with dim lighting and dark walls.  It was fairly empty for a Friday night but this may have been because it was a late dinner at about half 8.

Food

As soon as we sat down, a basket of prawn crackers were brought to our table – a nice gesture but I wished they were Thai prawn crackers (the spicy type). The food was pretty good – we went for a duck & lychee red curry which was tasty (rich but the sweetness from the lychees put a twist on an average Thai curry), beef with basil and chilli (we found the beef to be quite tender), king prawns with vermicelli, pineapple fried rice and coconut rice.  I was pleased to see the prawns being large, as in truly “king prawns” but it tasted disappointingly like crab claws (they were lightly battered) and the vermicelli soaked up the sauce quickly which made it very salty if left to stand for too long.  The pineapple fried rice, served in a pineapple shell was excellent – it was very moist (probably due to the tomatoes) and it contained a fair amount of king prawns. 

We had no room for dessert since we had ordered all of the above for two people! However, I am not even sure there was a dessert menu as we were never offered one.

Service

We had no issues in being served by a friendly waitress and the food arrived promptly.  The only gripe that I have on service is at the end of the meal when we were trying to flag someone down to pay the bill.  We saw someone cashing up (so perhaps they were preparing to close early given the quietness) but all the servers were at the back of the restaurant, hidden behind a wall for a substantial amount of time.  As we were sat right next to the front door, we concluded that we could have walked out without anyone noticing.  Obviously, we had no intention of doing a runner so we constantly looked over to see if we could grab anybody’s attention and after waiting 5-10 minutes, we managed to pay the bill.

Summary

Overall, the food was tasty, the portions were good and the prices were ok so all in all, it was good value for money and given the location, we would be likely to return again.