Pad Thai Aree aims to take the classic Thai street side dish to new heights of respectability but forgets the pad thai en route. Set in the lower ground floor of Erawan Bangkok mall, the restaurant’s open space is tastefully decorated with wicker screens, mosaic walls, and orange lacquer chairs though the view of the escalators and the sight of Caesar’s Steak’s staff milling around their empty restaurant are a touch depressing. The menu is a cute faux-collage with quality photographs of the dishes, making the laminated appetizer list all the more sad. Nor are these non-pad thai dishes palatable. The five pieces of breaded shrimps come with sweet sauce, tartar and diced cucumber and pineapple. You’ll need them—or lots of beer—to try to wash away the horrid flowery, oily and undercooked guck that coats the shrimps. Deep-fried sea bass with somtam is, at first, similarly unbearable until you notice that the pasty breading hides a succulent, fresh morsel of fish. The salty, but otherwise flavorless, somtam it comes with hardly made up for these initial disappointments. Things do shape up with the namesake pad thai dishes. Choose your shrimps (dried, small, large) and your “carbs,” from spaghetti to wunsen and, of course, the usual sen chan—but know that portions are designed for weight-watchers. On our last visit, we tried macaroni with big shrimps. The overcooked pasta was saved by four plump, perfectly cooked shrimps and a sweet sauce livened up with onions. A pleasing dish for tourists and mellow Bangkokians, but we could have done with a bit more kick. The flagship of Pad Thai Aree is its Giant Seafood Pad Thai. Apart from a dry, tasteless crab claw, it offers fresh seafood cooked just right—generally the restaurant’s saving grace. The staff is diligent and knowledgeable, if a bit reluctant to make recommendations. With such pleasing service and décor, Pad Thai Aree is really just missing better pad thai to make us forsake the street side alternatives.
