Monday, January 22, 2007

Somtum Nua, papaya salad restaurant, bangkok

This inconspicuous restaurant is quite easy to miss.. but then again, the long queue outside the restaurant (esp during dins) will let you find this place in an instant. As usual, being the ultra kiasu eater, since people are queueing there, I pretty much assumed that the food is tasty..
Somtum Nua serves north eastern thai cuisine and is pretty popular amongst the locals, esp the youngsters. We ordered somtum (since they are named the papaya salad restaurant), beef stir fry with chilli, lemongrass chicken, steam spicy sour fish and deep fried fish . The service was very slow, and when the dishes came, it took them very long to serve us white rice. :(
We had the deep fried fish first, which looks more like fish cakes..Though it tasted ok, it was nothing to shout about either, i prefer the fried fish paste in Crock Yai .And biting into it confirms our guess.. it was fish cakes..Most of the dishes were served soon after.. The stir fry beef with chili was not good at all, the beef's texture was like rubber. The sauce was not very flavourful, was just spicy. The lemongrass chicken was just average, though it fared better than the beef, the chicken meat was so sparse, we thought we had ordered lemongrass chicken bones instead...
The only decent (above average) dish was the steamed fish, which was tasty...the fish was nicely marinated, sourish, spicy, sweetish and once dipped with the sauce, it goes really well with rice.
Alas, their somtum was not good.. :(. I found it too sour and man, it was really really spicy. We ordered the spicy somtum, and since we have been able to makan those that we have ordered from other restaurants, we thot we could take the "heat". But Somtum Nua's.. my goodness, it was so spicy that I only needed one mouthful to numb my lips and throat. And the spiciness lasted for a good hour :(. Not enjoyable at all.
What Julianne thinks?
Over hyped, average restuarant.
I am really not sure why Somtum Nua is so popular. The dishes were really just so-so. Maybe I've ordered the wrong dishes? Maybe. Anyways, for those who wanna try, Somtum Nua is located at Soi 5. Cant remember the exact restaurant number though. Very near Siam BTS, in Siam Square.

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3 Comments:

Blogger Rasa Malaysia said...

The first picture does look like fish cakes.

BTW, I am not sure if you are aware of it, but it's very hard to read your text on a purple background...;) Perhaps I am color blind? :P

23 January, 2007  
Blogger sc said...

ya rasa malaysia, it does look like fish cakes instead of what's written on the menu, ie, fried fish pieces eh?.. :(
u mean the text used for my posts? the text is dark brown and the back ground is light lilac, reading frm my com, its very contrasting and clear, no issues in reading wor.. hmmmm, i wonder if other visitors r facing the same prob... :(. thanks for letting know though..

23 January, 2007  
Blogger Blooming Iris said...

The first dish is not fish cake. Locals call it Moo Yor, something like a pork sausage. The famous dishes at Som Tum Nua are actually the following: garlic fried chicken wings, stir fried rice vermicelli, and spicy Northeastern soup. All eaten with sticky rice, not white rice.

I agree that it's quite an overrated restaurant. Another option for Northeastern food is Cafe Chilli at Siam Paragon shopping mall.

23 July, 2009  

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