Lovely spring rolls… Best I’ve had! And spicy, tasty green curry. Highly recommendable. Just be patient with waitresses’ own English. Nice experience all in all
Stuart F.
Place rating: 2 Derby, United Kingdom
Pla Tong(inside the Punch Bowl) is one of many Thai restaurants that have made their home in a traditional pub. I welcome the idea, I like pubs, and I like Thai food. What could go wrong? Well, first, the pub is a mess. The décor is very much I need of updating. The yellow light bulbs surely hide the true picture here. It’s dated, stuffy, poorly maintained and in desperate need of modernising. The service at the bar wasn’t very good either. Prices seem normal though. I got a bottle of still water for £1.50. The glass was clean and full of ice with a slice, so not bad there. Secondly, the restaurant part. The menus are tasty, the waitress is impossible to understand, and the food was served without any grace. I ate a green chicken curry that lacked much chicken and veg, but was swimming in coconut milk. The coconut rice was too sticky and the proportion of rice to curry was not right — more rice than was needed. By it tasted ok. Put it this way, I wouldn’t rush back, and if I lived here I wouldn’t eat here, but as I’m in the hotel across the road, it was a decent stop gap and probably much better than the food in the hotel bar.
