Where to Find the Best Thai Food in London

Everyone knows that Thai food is more than just bright green soups, phad Thai that hurts your teeth, and lots of chilli.

It’s kind of a tired old cliche to say this fact over and over again. Usually, this is followed by a riff on how different regions of the country’s food are and how their flavours aren’t just “spicy, sour, sweet, and salty.” This is usually followed by a comment on David Thompson’s influence on Thai restaurants and British chefs in the city.

Instead, let’s get right to it and look at our picks for the best Thai food in the city, whether you want perfectly re-created food from the Kingdom or British takes on Thai food using local ingredients. This is our guide to the best Thai food and places in London, so you can find it either way.

King Cross and Supawan

Great for getting a taste of Phuket without taking a 14-hour trip…

 

People in the capital don’t always have to think about Thai food through the lens of “nu” or “hip.” It doesn’t have to always be TikTok-style small plates and interiors made more for Instagram stories than for the pleasure of the diner. And so we find ourselves in Kings Cross at Supawan, a classy, modest place whose tastes are anything but that.

The owner and cook, Wichet Khongphoon, serves food from his home island of Phuket in a room that is so flowery that it might make you sneeze before the chilli and white pepper do. Do not worry; it looks lovely and goes well with the flowery and fruity cocktails you will soon be drinking (mine is called Love Don’t Be Shy, I’m Super Shy and has hibiscus and guava in it, of course).

Begin with the miang Phuket, which is the classic Thai starter dish. Supawan’s version has grilled prawns, a galangal caramel, and diced ginger, lime, peanuts, and other things that are sweet, salty, spicy, and sour all in one bite. It is served on top of a wild piper leaf. Fold, wrap, and scrunch… This guy gets down in one hit no matter what you do. The tongue gets more complicated after the taste is gone.

In spite of living in London for more than twenty years, we’re glad that cook Khongboon can still remember the food from his childhood in southern Thailand so well. It’s so great that you can order pla thu yud sai here. This is a seafood dish from Phuket that you won’t find anywhere else in Thailand, let alone the UK. The mackerel is deboned and hollowed out, and then its minced meat and red curry paste are stuffed inside it before it is grilled. The kids may praise the “tekkers,” but we’ll just say it tastes great. In the same way, the stuffed chicken wings show off the same skill.

Do not miss the famous “Dad’s beef curry” if it’s on the menu. Thankfully, Khongboon’s father came up with the idea, not yours or ours. It’s a thick, spicy red curry that tastes like coconut. Once the curry paste has cooled to Phuket room temperature, the flavours of fresh galangal and toasted coconut come out in it. This is one to savour. It goes best with a side of stir-fried morning glory that tastes like it could heal anything and lots of rice. So take it easy, order another Singha, and bloom the cook. It won’t be hard to find some.

Leytonstone and Singburi

A great choice for London’s hardest to book restaurant, whether it’s Thai or not…

 

Our all-time favourite Thai restaurant in London is Singburi, which is a real heavy-hitter.

In recent years, Singburi has stopped being Leytonstone’s best-kept secret and has lost its image as a “hidden gem.” It has won awards from Time Out London (which named it “restaurant of the year” in 2021) and other top chefs in the capital.

Bring your own alcohol because it’s a family event with chef Sirichai Kularbwong working the stoves and his mother Thelma running the room. Payment must be made in cash. The small restaurant doesn’t have a website and instead “grudgingly takes DMs for bookings” on Instagram. The atmosphere is a little disorganised, which is exactly what you want from your favourite area restaurant.

On the inside, everyone is friendly and the mood is exciting. There are lots of tasty Thai meals on the “normal” menu, like chicken satay skewers, tom yum, and phad Thai. But the truly outrageously delicious items are written on the restaurant’s blackboard. I recently made a southern curry with prawns and betel leaf that was rich, luxurious, and full of capsaicin. I also made a version of Thailand’s best comfort food, pad grapao, with minced mutton that turned out great.

But the moo krob (crispy pork) is the best thing in the world. It truly deserves its reputation as one of London’s best meals.

Spur Court Road, Plaza Khao Gaeng

Great for making curry, rice, and other spicy foods…

The Arcade Food Hall, backed by JKS, has been getting a lot of attention since it opened in April of this year.

Arcade Food Hall is in the Centre Point building on New Oxford Street, just a short walk from Tottenham Court Road station. It has a huge variety of food from around the world, with 8 different restaurant concepts and a full-fledged Southern Thai restaurant on the mezzanine above the communal dining area.

The name of that Southern Thai restaurant is Plaza Khao Gaeng. It has only been open for six months, but already serves some of the most authentic and spicy Thai food in London.

There has been a lot written about how spicy this is, but what really stands out are the fresh flavours of the ingredients. The chicken and massaman curries have coconut cream that tastes like it was just pressed, which is a hard job that you don’t often see in the capital. The sour curry has garcinia fruit instead of just lime and tamarind, and the khua kling has green peppercorns that add raspy heat along with different kinds of fresh and dried chillies. It works like magic.

Our only bad thing? Please make the tables bigger so that people can move around. They can’t help but order everything on the menu.

Also, talking about finding room, if you’ve managed to save room for seconds, there’s sushi, smash burgers, shawarma, and more on the floor below.

The people who run Plaza Khao Gaeng have now opened a new restaurant in Central London that focusses on food from Bangkok’s Chinatown. We can’t wait to try Speedboat Bar.

Kin + Deum, Bridge of London

Great for trendy, healthy Thai food close to London Bridge…

The name of the restaurant, Kin + Deum, in Thai means “eat and drink.” It’s a gentle, straightforward invitation that seems to match the healthy food, plant-based drinks, and generally laid-back vibe of the place.

The business is run by a family. The restaurant is run by three stylish Thai brothers from the Inngern family, and it puts a lot of emphasis on health and balance. For better or worse, it doesn’t use refined sugars or MSG, and it’s also gluten-free. This is also shown by the restaurant’s calm but beautiful interior.

There are recipes for meals from Bangkok on this menu, but the food really comes from all over Thailand. For example, laap salad is from the northeast, khao soi curry noodle soup is from the north, and panang is from the deep south. Hey, if you really want it, there’s even katsu curry made in the Kin + Deum way.

It doesn’t matter where the food comes from; the cooking here is great. The meals aren’t too heavy, but that doesn’t mean they lack chilli heat or acidity. Nope, everything is here, and it’s all very tasty.

Borough Market and Kolae

Wonderful for making coconut curry sticks…

Last year, the opening of Kolae in Borough Market was one of the most anticipated events. It seemed like every other video on Instagram was a tour of a room in different shades of cameo and a long explanation of a pickled mango dirty martini. The flame and chilli emojis came next.

Even if you’ve been hiding under a half-coconut husk for the past year, we won’t go on and on about how Kolae is from the same team as the great Som Saa. This time, we’ll only quickly talk about the style of cooking that gives the restaurant its name: a Southern Thai grilling method in which skewers are marinated in a thick coconut cream curry before being put on the coals. At Kolae, this is mostly used on chicken, squash, and mussels. The marinade soaks into the meat and turns into a beautiful, uneven rust. Add some calamansi and get dirty.

But really, you shouldn’t just order the main dish that the restaurant is named after. More than anything else, Kolae is a coconut milk party. Not the UHT stuff that can’t be cracked, though. Instead, the newly pressed kind, which Kolae does every day, has the most delicious sweetness. Enjoy that coconut cream in a curry with prawns, cumin leaf and a lot of turmeric. The curry is pungent from the prawn paste and fruity-sharp from the mouse shit chillies that have been ground into the paste.

Of course, a full Thai table is also a balanced table, so balance out those stronger flavours with something sour and tangy. The sour curry of grey mullet is perfect for this. There are two types of acid in this dish: lime and tamarind. It’s also very hot, to the point where it makes you dizzy, which is exactly how it should be. By now, there should be lots of hot, freshly steamed jasmine rice.

While you’re high, you’ll want to be able to see what’s going on in Kolae’s open kitchen, where pestles are banging and wok flames are licking the roof. If your stools look too much like Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Buttons, you might want to see a doctor. However, for now, enjoy the onslaught of complex and delicious flavours that are about to hit you.

Shoreditch and Som Saa

Perfect for that sea bass that’s crispy…

It’s a common way for restaurants to get popular: hold supper clubs and pop-ups to gain fans before crowdfunding your way into permanent space. But Som Saa did this common way in a very stylish way. Some great grilled chicken, pounded-to-order som tam salads, colourful laap, and other strong dishes mostly (but not only) from Thailand’s north got friends, fans, and financiers to offer £700,000 and a spot was found on a busy street in East London.

These two chefs/founders learnt a lot from David Thompson, the Thai food god, so it’s no surprise that they are so sure of their food. The flavours are strong but not overwhelming, the ingredients are fresh, and the spice levels are strong and noticeable.

Get there early and have a drink at the bar while snacking on some of Som Saa’s great food. Their naem (grilled pickled pork served with ginger and peanuts) is our favourite dish, and we would come here just for a few plates of it.

That being said, you would miss out on the restaurant’s famous deep-fried seabass with herbs and roasted rice powder. It has never been taken off the menu because it is so popular. It’s clear why; it tastes great.

The Smoking Goat in Shoreditch

Great for loud, shabby Thai drinking food…

We’ve loved Smoking Goat since the days when it was a loud, run-down place on Brewer Street in Soho. Don’t worry—the Thai barbecue restaurant has moved to Shoreditch, but the atmosphere is still loud, the chill levels are still Scoville-level, and the smell of smoke is even stronger, in the best way possible, of course.

This is food that is meant to wake you up. Even though the fish sauce chicken wings and Tamworth pork chop with spicy jaew dipping sauce are well-known and loved, it’s what the restaurant does with the offal that keeps us coming back.

Liver, heart, and stomach are used a lot in different laap, so you could eat these delicious Laotian and Thai salads at the Goat and be full. It’s the perfect meal in the city any time of the day, with lots of sticky rice, a som tam salad, and a few cold beers.

In the end, this place serves great Thai drinks and food. Because of this, Smoking Goat’s drinks and cocktail list is carefully chosen to go with. You can order a “Tray of Joy” that includes strange liquors from around the world, like a Coco Leaf Liqueur from Amsterdam, a watermelon Liqueur from Serra Di Conti, and, of course, Mekhong from Bangkok.

Kiln, in Soho

It’s perfect for a Thai-style celebration of the best British products…

Kiln, the second restaurant from the same Ben Chapman, is quite a show, with bar seats that look out over fires, coals and clay pots. You feel like you’re not in central London at all, but somewhere hotter and more natural.

The restaurant is proud to work with a small group of suppliers. Every day, fish is brought in straight from fishing boats in Cornwall, and heritage vegetables are given the same amount of attention on the menu as protein. During game season, that menu comes to life with jungle curries made with wood pigeon or wild mallard and raw deer minced laab salads. By the way, venison season runs from April to October.

For those who want something even better, and more regularly throughout the year, there is cull yaw, a type of mutton that comes from retired female ewes that were raised with the utmost care. In recent years, the meat has been on the menus of several well-known London restaurants. It has an amazing depth of taste. A spicy dipping sauce is often served with it at Kiln, either as a collar chop or on grilled spears with a sprinkle of cumin. It’s just so damn tasty.

East Chinatown’s Speedboat Bar

A great way to try one of Bangkok’s most famous meals…

This bright, neon-lit gem opened in September 2022. It was the idea of British chef Luke Farrell, who is very good at Thai food and has spent years studying Thai food while living in Dorset, London, and Thailand.

His first restaurant, Plaza Khao Gaeng, opened with the help of the increasingly popular JKS. It was an instant hit, getting great reviews from almost all of the national newspapers soon after it opened in the spring of last year.

His second, Speedboat Bar, came out later that same year. It’s safe to say that his tribute to Bangkok’s Chinatown has taken off. Or, better yet, speed down the river…

Speedboat Bar gets its name from the bright lights of Bangkok’s Chinatown and the exciting sport of speedboat racing along the city’s canals, or klongs. The two-story restaurant’s main eating areas have a simple, stainless steel design that looks like a Thai-Chinese shophouse. The upstairs clubhouse bar has signed portraits of speed boat racers and plays Thai pop, turbo folk, and molam music over the speakers. Be careful not to down a few jelly bias while you’re up there.

Many of the Thai herbs and ingredients used in the food are grown at Farrell’s nursery in Dorset, Ryewater. This gives the flavours a realness, like in the chicken matchsticks (chicken wings cut in half lengthwise) with a cute tangle of shredded green mango salad or the clams stir-fried in nahm prik pao, a dish that is popular in Bangkok Chinatown restaurants like the famous TK Seafood.

The name of this signature is a tribute to the famous Jeh O Chula, which is on the edges of Yarowat, and her famous Tom Yam Mama Noodles. We’ve eaten the original more times than we’d like to admit in public, and we can say that Speedboat’s version is just as good.

Don’t forget to save room for the pineapple-filled pie, which is a nod to the Ezy Bake pies you can get at 7-Eleven stores all over Thailand. Be careful, these flaky babies go fast, so if you want something sweet, place your order at the start of the meal.

It’s possible that Speedboat Bar is better than taking a bus to Thailand in the coming months if you can’t use that time to go there.

Farang and Highbury

The best place in North London to get warm and energising Thai food…

Thai food in the capital is so famous now that the usual long explanations don’t seem necessary. You already know that farang means “foreigner,” dishes are meant to be shared, everything revolves around rice, and Thai food is very different from region to region.

Even though we all speak the language so well now, that shouldn’t take away from how great the food at Farang is. Their gai prik, which is deep-fried chicken wings with a sweet fish sauce glaze, is simply divine. And their bigger, sharing curries, which are cooked slowly and steadily, always pack a huge punch of depth and verve while still being resolutely comforting.

To soak up all the sauce, make sure you order a side of turmeric and roasted garlic butter bread. Happiness.

Bowl of Begging, Peckham

Great for making beautiful plates of zing and fire…

The Begging Bowl is on Peckham’s foodie street Bellenden Road. They use Thai street food to make beautiful small meals that are full of spice and fire. This place is lively even during the week because the building is pretty and light.

On the menu, meals have real clarity and punch, and the precise flavours show that the food was sourced with care. There is an endless supply of delicious and healthy jasmine rice. A real treat.