Located at: 98 Horton Place, Colombo 07, Sri Lanka

Visited on: 20th July, 2024

Siam House’s recently-opened flagship restaurant at Horton Place is hard to miss. Being fans of Thai cuisine, we thought of checking the place out sooner than later. The spacious interior is well-lit, adorned with images of Thai dancers on the walls, and eye-catching Thai silk runners, place mats and coasters on the tables. On to the food.

We started off with some fresh juices – Pineapple (LKR 750), Papaya (LKR 750) and Mango (LKR 800). They were excellent, all very fresh and completely undiluted, thick and delicious.

Of course, we had to try their Prawn Tom Yum soup – other options were vegetable, chicken, seafood (LKR 960 for a small bowl). This was pretty good. The broth had a nice balance of spicy and sour flavours, as well as plenty of mushroom, lemongrass and galangal. There were five sizeable prawns in my bowl. We quite enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, that was where our being impressed ended. We tried their Chicken Satay (LKR 2,280 for 6 sticks), which was a bit dry and hard from being overdone. The marination on it was alright, but it was a task to get off the skewer and eat. The peanut sauce was more like a peanut chutney in terms of both taste and texture. Not quite what we anticipated.

We asked for the Spicy Papaya Salad (LKR 1,200) to be prepared less spicy. While this request had been adhered to, the papaya salad lacked any form of flavour whatsoever. To put it plainly, it was quite bland and, in fact, we didn’t finish the dish – which says a lot, given that we usually love Thai papaya salad.

From their curries, we tried their Thai Jungle Curry – cuttlefish (LKR 1,940). This dish comprised of mixed vegetables with cuttlefish, and was really spicy. The heat that it created on the palate made it hard to enjoy. Moreover, the sauce gave off an unpleasant flavour that we couldn’t quite figure out, but did not fancy. Another dish that we did not finish.

The Steamed Garupa – with Lemon Sauce (LKR 3,070 for a medium fish) was the only hope for some sort of revival, and while it wasn’t as bad as the satay, salad and jungle curry, it was still a far cry from the best. With large slices of garlic and, oddly, a significant amount of celery, it wasn’t the greatest in terms of flavour. The fish itself could have been steamed to a softer consistency. If I’m to say something positive, the sauce wasn’t too bad to have the rice with.

We ordered Thai Steamed Rice (LKR 450) to pull all of the dishes together. Well, there was nothing to complain about it – so, that was something.

Siam House’s dessert menu, with its options being predominantly ice cream- and fruit-based, failed to entice us, so we skipped dessert altogether.

All in all, contrary to our expectation, the culinary experience at Siam House turned out to be well below par – which was quite disappointing, given our love for Thai cuisine. And while the steward who served us was very courteous and friendly, it caught us rather off-guard when one of the senior employees (supervisor/manager) turned up with dinner plates while we were having the starter, and expected us to move the plates – from which we were eating – for him to place the dinner plates in front of us. When we stated the obvious – that we were eating – he placed the pile of plates elsewhere on the table and left, for us to take the dinner plates ourselves when we were done with the starter. Baffling, to say the least.

Yummy rating: 2.5 / 5.0