Pad Thai and tom yum goong for less than US$7 at Golden Prince Thai Restaurant in Causeway Bay
- The authentic Thai food, staff and surroundings are contrasted with a lack of flavour
- The portions were generous and inexpensive, but again, the blandness was a let down
Tom yum goong soup and pad Thai are on the menu of almost every Thai restaurant outside Thailand, and Golden Prince Thai Restaurant is no exception.
We felt like we were dining at a small restaurant in Thailand – almost all the staff were Thai, the music playing in the kitchen was Thai, and the handcrafted bowls and wooden decorations on the walls were Thai.
The tom yum goong chicken soup with rice (HK$48) looked appetising. Steamed Thai rice was soaked in a thick orange broth with a great variety of ingredients – tomatoes, oyster mushrooms, shredded chicken and coriander.
The chicken was tender, moist and generously portioned. It was a pity the sour flavour dominated the dish, masking the spiciness. It also lacked the aromatic flavour of coconut milk.
The fried rice noodles in the pad Thai, mixed with sauté pork jowl, scrambled egg, dried tofu and bean sprouts (HK$55), had a good texture, although the dish was somewhat bland.
Each set came with a bowl of soup with lotus root and catjang bean. unfortunately it was too salty.
Customers can enjoy a Thai snack at special price of HK$25 with a set lunch. The deep fried spring rolls were rather tasteless and only used grated carrots and bean starch vermicelli as the filling.
Another snack we tried, lemongrass chicken wings (HK$25 for three in a set), also suffered from blandness, although the meat was tender and the crust was golden and crisp.
Both snacks were served with Thai sweet chilli sauce, which wasn’t spicy or sour enough to perk up the dishes.
It only cost each of us an extra HK$5 for a drink. Iced longan tea was sweet, thirst quenching and cooling with plenty of dried longan meat. But we couldn’t detect any coconut flavour in the iced coconut milk, which was too watered down.
The lunch menu had a wide range of set meals with an average price of HK$50, available from 11am to 5.30pm, when the 10 per cent service charge was waived. Although the dishes weren’t to our taste, they were all cheap and came in large portions.
Golden Prince Thai Restaurant, Dandenong Mansion, 379-389 Jaffe Road, Causeway Bay, tel: 3619 7517. Open: 11am to 11pm
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