E-San Thai Cuisine

They had some of the worst service I’ve ever experienced. So rude and inconsiderate. I’m glad they’re gone. Hopefully a much better restaurant will move in soon!

Had to go 1 star after last night. Only 2 people in the restaurant
should have been my first clue. I ordered Pad Kee Maw to go. When
I arrived home the pasta looked like it had been crushed instead
of broken. It was like eating mush. Awful. And I learned that the
spring rolls they have at the cart on 6^th avenue are not the same as you get
Here. You get the cookie cutter spring rolls that are horrible.

I was over the top excited to eat here because I LOVE their downtown location and thought I can just eat here now!
Oh no…
So my boyfriend and I are greeted and seated. Friendly service, beautiful murals on the wall, cute bar on the side. Different than downtown, but still a cute looking place.
We order a soda and we are served soda in a can??? What??? You can’t even afford a soda fountain machine??? I hate can soda! It would have been nice to have known that it’s can soda before I ordered! (Downtown has fountain soda so why would I expect different??)
We had this younger waitress take our order. Not the friendliest, kinda like she’s never done this, but being forced to do it, kinda attitude. We ordered our food, served in a timely matter, and it was delicious as always. the younger waitress never checked in on us, but was later checked on by another waitress who was very friendly and she got us more waters as they’ve been empty for awhile.
The younger waitress came up and asked if we wanted anything else and I said I’d like to have a mango rice dessert — whatever it’s called. I craved it and was looking so forward to it! She said ok.
Tick, tock, tick, tock…10 mins later we get our check. No dessert. The dessert isn’t even on our check. A few mins later she comes back and I tell her «we ordered the mango dessert» «oh, oh yeah» she comes back with a corrected check with the dessert now on it. A couple of mins later she comes back with the dessert in a to-​go box and bag and just tossed it on our table and turned around.
NEVER have I received such $#!? kind of service! I wrote in the «tip» section «that was the worse service ever and I will not return!»
And we haven’t.

Love this place… The food is fabulous. I’m always astounded how empty it is when I come in. More people should come on in!

REALLY good Pad Thai. Super tasty.
The Yellow Curry was on the runny/​thin side. Still packed full of flavor, just kind of watery in texture. I’ll probably get it again, because it was good. Perhaps it was just a one time thing.

I am torn between 4 and 5 stars. But I’m stingy so 4 it is. Maybe when I eat here again… and I will eat here again. This place has a very comfortable feel, like the restaurants my mom and I used to choose back on the east coast.
Big, spacious and clean, set conveniently next to the Kenton Liquor and pipe store. It is far nicer to look at than many thai or other asian spots. So the location is great and the place itllef is quite lovely. Floor plants placed in corners, (they make be fake) and beautiful murals covering the walls (see my pics!). But on the down side of the space — it feels a bit too impersonal. I would like it to be a little cozier. And speaking of cozy, bring on the heat, please! It was a little too chilly for my liking and it’s a sunny day here in Portland.
Amanda and I had some Thai Tea (hot) that was just delicious and served in super cool round glass teapots. We ordered from the lunch menu — chicken with mango, peppers, and veggies and a thai sauce (L28) and Shrimp with potatoes, carrots and veggies, peanuts in a coconut curry sauce. Both were just delicious! Alas, the mango was just about inedible because it wasn’t ripe — and that made me sad. But the dish itself was lovely and the curry dish so sweet and yummy!
Both came with a decent blob of white rice, and we were oit of there for $ 10 each plus tip. That included tea and bubbly water. Not bad at all! Ripen the mangos and turn up the heat about 7 degrees and you’re well on your way to a 5 star rating!

In my search to find a good thai restaurant in North Portland, I tried E San Thai. I ordered the BBQ Chicken and my wife the pad thai tofu. Instead of a well put together dish what I received was a half a chicken that had been under a heat lamp all day or at the very least was cooked at an earlier day and heated up in a microwave. the sauce was sweet and sour sauce from a can. The pad thai was slightly less disappointing, but both were thrown out and we ate peanut butter and jelly that night. If you need Thai food in North Portland head over to Mississippi ave much better places there.

Vegetarian heaven! It’s all so good and awesome. Go for the Pineapple fried rice… Never fails.

Utterly horrible — the worst Thai I’ve had in Portland, hands down. The mussaman curry and pad see ew were both flavorless but very spicy – heat with no flavor. The crab puffs were bland and oily. We had leftovers but we won’t be eating them. I spent $ 30 on take out and it definitely wasn’t worth the money. Expensive, horrible food. At least the service was nice. Don’t eat here.
PS — why can’t Portland have a great Thai restaurant (that isn’t Pok Pok)?
PPS — to people who claim E-​San is authentic Thai: Go to Chicago and eat at almost any Thai restaurant there (especially TAC Quick in Buena Park). That’s authentic Thai. Thai in Portland is utterly disappointing in comparison – I’ve had nothing that comes close. And E-​San is the worst of the worst – and the least authentic I’ve had.

I need to update my previous review because E-​San is just awesome. The best Pad Thai I’ve had. Every time I have called to place an order the past few months, they have been open, prompt and completed my order to perfection!
Thanks, E-​San for being awesome!

This place used to be great! Used to be. Really disappointing the last few times! The same dish I get every time has been totally different the last 3 times. Not great service anymore. I wish it could mirror the esan in downtown again, even though its a different family who runs it.

So frustrated. I continue to go here, even though my experiences have been decidedly mixed (see previous review) and the food though not bad is nothing special, because it is so close to my home. I just called and placed an order and the person on the other end of the phone first couldn’t figure out what chicken satay was (??) and then said «Well, it’ll be ready in 20 minutes…» (yelling in the background) «…No, ten minutes. We will be closed in ten minutes.» This despite the fact that it was 9:10 and they are supposed to be open til 10pm. Oh well, typical. I got my order, and instead of the Pad Se Ew, it’s Pad Thai! I called back to change it but of course couldn’t because they were now closed!!! I am so frustrated. I’m moving to another neighborhood soon and won’t miss this completely unprofessional restaurant.

I had a really poor version of Pad See Ew here. I am a big fan of this dish, when done well. The waitress asked me «how spicy» I wanted the dish. This is not typically a dish that comes spiced at all. It’s a sweet dish with a soy and oyster based sauce and some garlic, generally with fish sauce added «to taste». Well, ALL I TASTED in this fish was fish sauce. In fact, I keep thinking of FISH, when I meant to say DISH. All I tasted in this DISH was fish sauce. I can’t get it out of my mind. It was one of the saltiest thai dishes I’ve ever tasted. It was pretty awful.
This restaurant is very close in proximity to my workplace, and it’s relatively cheap, so I come here on occasion, but I have been repeatedly disappointed with the quality of food here, so I don’t think I will return, unless I hear that the ownership and staff has changed.

Awful.
The place was not very full, but it still took forever for me to get a server to take my order. I never got a glass of water. When my food got to me it was boxed up! Rude. I never said anything about getting it to-​go. Though at that point nothing about the place made me want to stay. Then as I sit down to eat, I’m all, where’s my tofu? Cashews? The goodies that come in fried rice? Mmk, way to suck. Yeah. Pretty safe to say I’m never going there again. Ever.

Massive respect for E-​San Thai Cuisine for their usage of the «traditional» Asian spiciness scale. When I ordered my noodles «very spicy», the server informed me that their spice scale is stronger than most in the US, and she recommended I try two stars of spice (out of five, being the hottest) if I wanted it really hot. At the two-​star level, my mouth was on fire. In a good way. This was the spiciest Thai food I’ve ever eaten. It just makes me wonder what three, four or five stars would have tasted like. And it was pretty good too!
Cans of PBR are on the menu for $ 2, but they always seem to be out. Always. At this point, we have concluded that they don’t actually sell PBR, they just leave it on the menu to attract customers looking for a good deal. It’s not very hard to order more.
The service was slow, but friendly. It took the server about ten minutes (on a not-​busy night) to even give us menus, and the drinks and food took a while too, but it wasn’t heinous.
Great food, good beer options. Really freaking spicy. I want more.

E-​San is hands down my favorite Thai restaurant in the North Portland area.
Great food, wait staff — while they may be a bit slow, all you need to do is a quick wave and they’ll help you out. No biggie. If that bugs you, stay your pretentious ass out of North Portland.
Food is always on point and has never let me down. Pad Thai is tasty and cooked consistently. Seafood dishes are fresh. The atmosphere is nice, perfect for an evening in the neighborhood.
Pricing is standard for most Thai places. Dinner for two will end up around $ 25.00 with tip.
Will definitely be back for more.

Sadly. can’t give this place a very good rating. We stopped in here before going to a Play we were seeing in the St. Johns area. There was the four of us.
The waiter was horrible! He hardly checked in on us, then when our food came, seems like my food was forgotten and he kept asking me what I ordered.
There was no excuse for the slow service since they weren’t even busy. I don’t know that our server even knew what he was doing since he barely ever came back to check on us at all, it was like 20 or so minutes in between the time he came to check on us and to get anything.
I had to eat some rice because my food was so late. I was not impressed with the food either, marginal at best. I would think this place had a nice bar and that as it. Too bad I didn’t order something to drink. I’m sure they couldn’t have messed that up? The server didn’t even know to split our bills, he said could he just split it down the middle and we let him because by time the time he would have figured that out. we would have been late.

E-​San Thai is great Thai food. They have a wide variety of menu options, most of which are available to view online. I went here last night and saw that there were a few options on the menu that were not online, some of them looked like very tasty specialty dishes. Last night Tyler was my server. Great as always, super friendly and knowledgeable. He is also great for recommendations.
I had the catfish stir-​fry special, amazing. I’m just finishing my leftovers today and they are still delicious. My girlfriend had the mixed seafood curry, which was also spectacular.
The descriptions on the menu paint an accurate picture of what they serve. The vegetables are always cooked done but firm, and I feel they put in the proper portions of meat. Some lower end Thai places load you up on rice and sauce and leave out vegetables and meat. Not here.
My comment on the price debate is that you should be careful what you order. I’ve gone though times when I wanted a great dinner for less than $ 10, I went to E-​San. I’ve had times when I wanted to take some friends to dinner and didn’t care how much I spent (within reasonable Portland standards), I took them to E-​San. Just be careful what you order and you can find a meal to fit your budget, but with everything being priced between $ 7 – 14 I can’t see what there ever would be to complain about. The most expensive dishes are the seafood dishes, which makes sense to me.
The service while always friendly, sometimes cannot handle the volume. They do run a light staff and I’ve noticed that patronage is irregular, so the more I go the more I understand how difficult it would be to staff this place. They do a large take out volume nightly. Previously I’ve sat in the restaurant with two other occupied tables in the entire place and watched a constant stream of people walk in and out to pick up orders.
The interior has painted murals on the walls. I usually find these cheesy but these are actually interesting. Exposed rafters in the high ceiling and an open layout of tables makes the space seem expansive.
Drinks are stiff, there is a good selection of draft beer, and the house white wine is good. I highly recommend this place to anyone in NoPo looking for tasty Thai food.

Since moving to the Kenton neighborhood we’ve slowly been searching out our new go to spots. E-​San Thai certainly stands out as one of our favorite finds. Starting with the standard Pad Thai and the Pad kee Mau, going on th the red curry, crispy rice, sauteed veggiesand fried fish all have been out standing. The noodles have beenfirm and flavorful. The curry tasty and balanced, the crispy rice dish… well crispy and bursting with flavor. The vegetables have been crisp and savory, not too heavy on sauce, but just enoough to allow the steamed rice to soak up some of the flavor.
The service each time we’ve been in has been prompt and courteous. Quick as weel.
Needless to say we’ll be coming back here on a regular basis.

NOMNOMNOM.
This place is DELISH. I’m going to start with one negative — oi, kinda pricey.
But that’s ok because NOMNOMNOM is all I can think of when I think of this place. I’m like a Pad Thai Connasuier (code for «I only ever order Pad Thai) and this place tops my list of places in Portland. The portions are huge — it’s always a two meal thing for me.
I also tried the crab puffs and they are also THE best I’ve ever had anywhere. Crunch, stuffed to the brim with deliciousness and amazingess.
I also tried their Thai… I don’t remember its clever name but the alcoholic version of Thai Iced Tea. Just thinking about that makes me want one right now… alas, I’m at work.