Review - Ban Rommai Restaurant

[JCauto]

I saw a previous topic for this, but it's been archived so I guess I'll just have to restart it.

This place has always intrigued us, as we regularly passed it on our way elsewhere, and it always seemed packed judging by the many cars out front. My wife finally remembered it when I asked what to do for dinner, so off we went. As usual, there were many cars out front and we expected to have to wait for a seat. This feeling was confirmed by the waitress asking us in a concerned voice whether we had reservations - we didn't, but a quick glance let us know that either everyone must have been arriving at 8 pm (it was 7.45) since there were only five tables occupied. We sat down and perused the menu.

They have one of those massive menus offering everything including Thai and Western food, which is always a warning sign to me - restaurants offering everything seldom make anything special in my experience. Unfortunately, my premonitions turned out to be prophetic. Expecting some good Thai, we ordered the following:

1. Tod Mun Goong - these are deep-fried breaded shrimp cakes for non-Thai speakers, typically served with honey. This was, without a doubt, the worst version of this dish I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. It was more like a slightly shrimp-flavoured donut. Amazingly, I could not detect a single piece of actual shrimp in any of the three I dissected, the rest having been roundly rejected as disgusting by the remainder of the table.

2. Pak Boong Fai Daeng - this is stir-fried morning glory, one of the most basic and standard Thai dishes. This was both not spicy and had far too much fish sauce applied so that it was too salty. My wife, who loves this dish, couldn't eat it even with her guilt about leaving food on the table.

3. Pak Kana Moo Grob - this is stir-fried Kale with crispy pork. Similar to the morning glory, the dish was prepared with the seeming goal of getting you to consume more beer so that you could wash the salt down. The crispy pork had no crispness to it whatsoever. Dreadful.

4. Gaeng Khiow Waan Gai - this is green chicken curry with eggplants. Definitely prepared with canned coconut milk, giving it that manufactured sweetness and blandness that destroys any vestige of the glory that this dish can be. Pity too, because the round eggplants were very fresh and nice. I presume that a packaged curry paste was used, as if someone had taken the time and effort to prepare it using fresh ingredients then they wasted that time and effort. Seems they were short on chicken too.

5. Poo Nim Pat Pong Karee - this is soft-shell crab fried with yellow curry. This was the best dish they made, mainly because the vegetables were fresh and the curry tasted good. Would have been nicer with more than one tiny soft-shell crab, but given that this was the only edible thing we ordered, it was snapped up poste-haste.

The service matched the food, despite the large number of staff and lack of customers. The meal was around 1,100 baht with two large Heinekin beers. While eating I had to check Thaivisa for reviews, and was astonished to find only good ones on the forum here. This means that the place has either gone completely downhill since the last review in March 2013 here, or the reviewers also owned the place.

I remain intrigued however - who do all the cars belong to, since they weren't there eating unless there's a massive complex behind it that we didn't see? So if you pass this place and see it packed out, I recommend you keep driving. There's more than enough great food in Chiang Mai to waste your baht on this place.

[elektrified]

Never heard of it. How could 2 people order so much food!

[JCauto]

Was with my kids too. Even hungry teenagers were not impressed.