9 Tastes

Came here with a friend for the first time and I really enjoyed the food. Service was really great and I love the ambience. The only thing is that I find some tables to be too close together but they can’t really do anything about that since it’s a small restaurant. Other than that everything was amazing and I loved the food!

It’s usually hard to go wrong with ordering Pad Thai, however, I wasn’t a fan of theirs at all. There was just so much noodle vs. everything else (= tiny shrimp)…it seemed like I was just eating a big plate of noodles without much variety in flavor.
Great service and ambiance though — I can see this being a date place, if the food was better or more consistent… Would probably opt for a curry dish next time if I come again.

I ate here a few times in the past year and each visit was solid. The crispy chicken has a generous portion size and tastes pretty good. I also tried the fried ice cream during my most recent visit; the shell wasn’t as crispy as I would have liked but I enjoyed the noticeable contrast between the warm shell and cold ice cream. Overall, 9 Tastes is worth a visit if you enjoy Thai food or are looking for a filling, reasonably priced meal.

Food: 3.5
9 Tastes is a «pretty good» Thai place in Harvard Square that’s slightly better than its neighbor, Spice. The food will definitely be filling and the portions aren’t shy. I came here for dinner with a group and ordered red curry with shrimp and tasted the drunken noodle. The curry had a creamy taste of coconut milk and a bit of spice. There was a nice mix of vegetables and shrimp in the curry. The drunken noodle had a nice basil flavor, and the portions can make for two meals with one dish. The mango and sticky rice dessert is also pleasantly good! The mango was fresh and sweet, while the sticky rice was sweet and aromatic due to the small pieces of coconut.

This place was nothing special, came here with my friend who was visiting from NY, her food was really good, mine on the other hand was bland and tasteless! I ordered the veggies with rice, veggies had no sauce or salt or any flavor at all! Had to use the peanut sauce they gave us for the salad to flavor the veggies. I wouldn’t recommend this place if you are familiar with Thai food as I am, I’ve had ALOT better Thai than this. But I have to say that their Thai iced tea was good.

Got take out so cannot comment on eat in. Over sauced Pad Thai. Pretty weak chicken satay. Very watery Pa-​Nang curry. Only 4 Crab Rangoon? For 6.99 I want at least double that, I don’t care what you put in it. Good Peanut Sauce and sticky rice.

For 4 years, this has been one of my go-​to places for Thai food, but that was mostly because of the lack of alternatives. Thai Hut near Inman Square is cheaper, but farther away for me. I suspect that Spice is basically the same since their websites and menus are virtually identical.
My favorite dish was the 9 Tastes Pad Thai, but in the last year or so their shrimp in it started tasting really gross — consistently fishy (old, not fresh) and improperly deveined, pretty unpleasant to eat. I stopped ordering it because it put me off so much. I tried their eggplant dish once, since I love basil eggplant, but the eggplant was not cooked all the way through, leaving it chewy and tough, and not flavorful enough. I sometimes got the green curry, but I would have loved more eggplant in it, rather than only bamboo shreds and peppers. The chicken in their dishes tends to be pretty dry, but I’ve come to accept that as inevitable. It’s the same at Thai Hut. Also, I made the mistake of ordering their fresh spring rolls expecting a Vietnamese-​style rice-​paper-​wrapped spring roll. This was so far from that! They use this weird crêpe-​y, pancake-​y wrap, which falls apart, and inside it they put a ton of Thai basil — wayyy too much for me. Plus, the sauce was like a horrible sweet-​and-​sour deal, not the peanut sauce I like with the Vietnamese-​style ones. Maybe this was a problem of my expectations, but it was a disappointing shock!
I like their pineapple fried rice, it’s tasty and a big portion, with a large slice of cucumber and a wedge of tomato to cut through the curry flavors. Also their Kao Soy is tasty — creamy and rich — but I don’t really know what that’s supposed to taste like; I only tried it on recommendation from a Burmese friend, since this is one of the few places that serves this dish. I often got their delicious Thai Iced tea, and the service is great, too.

Solid product and value, no more, no less. Nothing particularly extraordinary, but pleasant indeed. Recommended.

Surprised that the ratings are averagely low. The service was great. The papaya salad, crispy duck, pad Thai, drunk noodle, and crab rangoons were great. Even their Thai ice tea!
I wish I lived closer. This is my favorite spot.

Great food at good prices. Great specials. Service is good, not great. Tables are too close together because it’s busy. Lots of Harvard students, faculty and Thai customers, so you know it’s good. I would go again.

This was a nice place for a quick lunch before some shopping and a movie in Harvard Square. We ordered the chicken fried rice and the crispy chicken pad Thai the rice was exquisite! The crispy chicken dish was pretty good too, but the noodles were a little rich.
Service was super quick and friendly, and it was overall a very nice time. We certainly will go there again when we are in Harvard square for that fried rice!

Normally 9 Tastes is one of my go-​to Thai delivery places, along with Spices. They just lost that slot after last night’s debacle.
My wife asked what I wanted to order and I couldn’t decide between the spicy pad thai and the crispy chicken pad thai. Both are normally quite good, but I prefer the mixture of sauce in the spicy pad thai over the regular version (which I find a bit too sour). But, I also wanted the crispy chicken, which is not an option on the spicy pad thai. So I had her order crispy chicken pad thai and ask for it spicy, thinking they’d just combine the two.
I shouldn’t have assumed. What I got was completely inedible. I made it through about five bites (maybe 15−20% of a takeout portion) before giving up in complete agony. This was not just spicy. It was literally pain-​inducing levels of capsaicin, with no regard for flavor whatsoever (it was still excessively sour).
Now, I’m not the kind of person who shies away from hot dishes. I can handle «5-​star Thai spice» on curry dishes, and I have no problem with habenero sauces. I even season my morning omelets with ghost chili hot sauce. I love spicy foods. So I’m not exaggerating here when I say this is the single hottest thing I’ve ever eaten and had no redeeming value whatsoever.
My lips tingled, burned and then went numb. I couldn’t sleep last night because of the constant burning in my intestines that survived whatever kinds of antacids and liquids I threw at it. This morning on the toilet, was borderline torture (doubly so when wiping just spreads hot chili oil all over your sensitive bits). Sorry for the graphic detail but this couldn’t possibly have been healthy.
There was no redeeming value to the dish that I got, none whatsoever. And that’s a shame because if I had just got the normal «spicy pad thai» I would have been happy as a clam. It was almost an afterthought slap in the face that the crispy chicken was undercooked and stringy.
I think I’ll stick with Spices for a while.

Great Thai place to order from. Drunken Noodles with tofu are my favorite but the Basil Crispy Chicken was a recent great discovery! The entrees are pretty big. Three entrees and an app were perfect for four of us.
Remember to ask for rice, they don’t give it automatically!

I got the «Secret Braised Chicken» dish, and the meat was so gross. Usually I’m not super picky about this kind of thing but the tough, fatty pieces of chicken resembled what I would feed to my dogs. I know it’s important to use all parts of the animal, but this meat was not prepared in an appetizing way at all (and it’s not like it was dirt cheap either). I think this chicken should have remained a secret!
Since I ordered off of the so-​called «9 Tastes Specialties» section of the menu, it’s hard to chalk this one up to a bad ordering choice, but I will say that 9 Tastes offers lots of menu options, and the restaurant is nice and quiet inside. There probably are some good dishes here, but I certainly wouldn’t risk paying $ 15 for another plate of chicken scraps to find out!

I got take out from 9 Tastes on a fairly busy evening — during Harvard Yale weekend — and was pleasantly surprised by their efficiency. The online system takes your order and then they call you to confirm. I was able to pay in person using credit, and didn’t have to give them any info over the phone or internet.
I ordered the basil chicken (with rice) and the tofu pad thai. Both dishes were fairly standard. The chicken was breaded and fried and was flavorful, though I felt that it was served with onions that were a bit undercooked and not enough basil leaves! The tofu pad thai was lighter in color — not the bright orange color that some places serve — and it had bean sprouts and egg. The egg was a bit stingy in serving size though… The tofu was lightly fried and made for the right textural variety in the dish. Overall the pad thai was nice, as it wasn’t too sweet.
I would go back again primarily out of convenience, and also to try out the curry. Overall not bad! Take out service was efficient and friendly and hassle free.

Service: Good, very attentive. Bit on the slower end, but good.
Food: I ordered chicken drunken noodles and tom yum soup. The tom yum soup was bit on the sweeter end but fairly well done, their choice of mushroom was good. The drunken noodles were bit on the salty end but you can definitely taste the chilly sauce. It’s not too spicy so I wouldn’t worry too much if you don’t like spicy food. The temperature of the food was just alright, hot enough so your food doesn’t taste greasy. I had to drink lots of water because of the saltiness but the waitress was attentive enough to make sure i get the water for the most part.
overall, I would definitely come back here again, it was a pleasant experience.

I can’t count how many Thai restaurants I’ve eaten at once and never reviewed for Unilocal because I don’t trust myself to distinguish, say, a three-​star massaman curry from a four-​star one. But 9 Tastes did enough to distinguish itself in my mind that I felt like I had to review it. The menu is really extensive, but the entrée that caught my eye right away was the pumpkin curry, which was spicy and squash-​filled and very good. I’d definitely go back to try some of the other entrees (especially some of the mango-​themed ones) that appealed.

My friends and I were craving some Thai food. We were quite hesitant on trying this place, but we went ahead and tried this place anyways just cause it was near harvard sq.
The place was a downstairs seating area with a lot of thai décor. The waiters were quite nice. I got the pineapple fried rice! The pineapple fried rice came in a great portion size with a lot of pinepaples. If you’re looking for a great blend in salty and sweet, Pineapple fried rice is the choice to go! It complements very well to where you’re not just eating MSG salt at the same time. Came with an assortment of peppers, chili, and chicken. Perfect blend for a dish
I wouldn’t mind stopping here again for some thai food if i was around the harvard sq area. My friends were satisfied as well for their dishes.

Let me say that lots of Harvard Sq. regulars love this place. I don’t.
I have had panang, pad thai, and thai iced tea.
I would never order the thai iced tea again here. Go to Qi in NYC for the best thai iced tea or get good thai iced tea at nearly every other place in Boston.
The pad thai is decent and comes in a huge portion. But I’ve had just as good or better at other Boston places for comparable $
And the chicken panang was also decent.
Meh sums it up perfectly.

If you like Spice, you’ll like 9 Tastes, unless you’re bothered by the idea of eating in a basement. To me, the food is the same at both locations, though I have many friends who swear that 9 Tastes is better.
Slightly larger portions and lower prices can be found in Porter Square, but 9 Tastes definitely does the trick for Asian comfort food in Harvard Square. It’s nothing special but will leave you more than satisfied. My personal favorite is the Beef Pad See Ew (not recommended for those who are afraid of a little oil/​grease).