Royal Orchard Thai Cuisine

It’s FRIDAY!!! Yeah! Today me and my other 2 colleagues came to this place for lunch thank to the chowhounds’ recommendation. I really felt like Thai for this Friday. I still remember when I first came to this company, I was told the tough question for the day is always “Where to eat?” – that’s why I’m so glad that we have chosen a new restaurant to try out today. Thanks again!

This place is located on E. of Yonge St., between Hwy 407 and John Street. If you drive north on Yonge from the GTA, it will be on your right hand side. It’s located near the big green Food Basics. You just can’t miss it!

So, we stepped into this Thai restaurant. I really like the decorations there… not very fancy, but it’s exotic, with the buddha statue and everything. At around 1pm the restaurant was about half full. Most of the patrons are non-Asian. The menu was quite small, folded-letter size, i.e. 3 half-letter size pages in total. They have the appetizers, desserts, entrees, curry, pad thai, etc. The price range of the entrees/curry/pad thai was around $5.95, which is not expensive at all. Of course, if you take into account the size of the dish, some people may find it not cheap either.

(Took some pictures using my colleague’s cell phone coz my DC was out of battery!!!)

The first thing that I noticed was…
The utensils are so huge!! (which made the dishes look even smaller :p)

So here’s what we ordered:

Pla Tod Mun (Thai Fish Cakes) – Spicy fish cakes of fresh ground fish filet, greeen bean, lime leaf. Deep fried, served with Thai spicy sauce – kind of similar to what I expected. The texture is similar to those in Chinese dishes, but this one taste a bit different – a bit spicy with the taste of herbs in it.

Vegetarian Pad Thai – Fried rice noodle with tofu, egg in tamarind sauce, cooked with seasonal vegetable – I like it – the noodle is chewy =) and the taste is good. But as you may notice, the serving size is quite small – about half of what you’ll get at other Thai places. We bought a take-out pad thai for my boss and he found it not really authentic thai taste although it tasted good.

Kai Krapao (Basil Chicken) – Chicken breast with thai basil leaves, chilli, garlic, onion, red and green pepper – I like the taste of Basil leaves, but find this dish a bit too salty.

Kang Pad Nuer (Red Curry Beef) – Sliced Beef in Thai red curry, cooked with coconut milk, pepper, basil leaves, and lemon grass. I like this dish too. I always like coconuty curry 🙂

Since the curry beef and basil chicken did not come with rice, we ordered 2 bowl of rice ($1/each).
Finally, the highlight of the day!!! I haven’t had sticky rice with mango for such a long long time! This dish is also the most expensive one among everything we ordered today. I think it costed about $6.95 or so.

3 main dishes, 2 rice, 1 dessert; the total came to about $34 before gratuity for 3 people. Visa card accepted for bills of over $20. Later on, we found out that the dishes we had was smaller since they are lunch portion. If you go there for dinner or order take-out, the portion will be much bigger. Of course, that means more expensive. The Pad Thai (take-out/dinner portion) cost about $9.50. Plus, their dinner/take-out menu has a much wider selection too! I think I will come back for dinner if there’s a chance.

Just in case you may wanna try this restaurant. From Monday to Friday, they open from 11:30a.m. to 10:30p.m. and Sat/Sun 5:00p.m. to 10:30p.m. I think they do get a lot of patrons from the offices nearby during lunch time.

FYI: Royal Orchard Thai Cuisine (L.L.B.O.)
10 Royal Orchard Blvd., Thornhill (E. side of Yonge, between Hwy 407 and John St.)
Tel: 905-709-1399