thai spoon

not that great.. there's a lot of hype for thisrestaurantbut i've been there twice now and don't find it all that great. had the spicy basil tonight -- it had 3 to 4 pieces of chicken it and some panfried onions, green and red peppers. it's expensive, too, compared to other restaurants. they also don't refill drinks, which bothers me. if you want some good thai food, try the thairestauranton noblestown road. it's also very cramped, especially on weekend nights. you end up listening to the person who is sitting next to you's conversation, which distracts and detracts. definitely not worth the money.

simple but good. dormont has been graced by/with this thairestaurantfortunately and i live very near-by so i've been trying various dishes out and liking most of them .
the soups are a bit on the thin side but tasty in any case.
they have a lunch special pricing deal which is more reasonable than their dinner prices which i think for dormont are a bit too high . apparently they also own "thai cuisine" in bloomfield which recently was renovated thru and thru . i have only been moderately impressed with thatrestaurantmaybe in part because i haven't liked the feel and ergonomics of the former space. i've yet to try it out since they re-opened .
thai spoon is on the cramped side so , if you're claustrophobic, you'd best avoid it .
not the complex gem that a nicky's thai kitchen is but ... good solid entry level thai food ...

really good pad thai. just thought i'd give this awesomerestaurantanother good review. the people who work here are so nice and my boyfriend and i always enjoy getting some take out. the pad thai is awesome! love this place! will miss them in june/july!


-----19 feb, 2012-----

yumyum. very good. i got the bangkok seafood and it was great, lots of different flavors and textures. tons of veggies and the sauce was really good. my boyfriend got the curry duck and he loved it, the waiter is very nice and informative. awesome to have this right across the street. definitely going back again.

thai spoon is excellent. i have ordered there on many occasions and the food has consistently been fresh and delicious. the best thairestaurantaround.

disappointing. i ordered take out pad thai with shrimp. i thought the dish was bland and only had 7 small shrimps in the noodles with very few bean sprouts. i thought the price ($12.95+) was expensive. i will probably give therestaurantanother chance because the reviews look good but will not try the pad thai again.

msg, fatty duck, why?. ever since we moved to the deep south hills area of pittsburgh, i've had to drive long distances to find reasonable to good thai food. so, when a colleague mentioned to me that there is a thairestaurantin dormont, i resolved to try it out and that brought me and my family to the thai spoon on a recent friday night.

the place is very small with ten or so tables and parking can be a challenge on potomac avenue, but there is a municipal parking lot around the corner and we lucked into a table for four without reservations. (people who came in right after us were told that they would have an hour wait for a table!) the decor is nothing to write home about, and the place is byob as we noticed when almost every other table brought their own wine bottles with them.

the menu is pleasingly large and appears to have a wide variety of items on it. while they had some of the traditional thais dishes - like pad thai, tom yum, colorful curries - i was puzzled by the lack of some other common dishes like lar nar, mee krob, and phat see ew. there was also a list of specials, but no indication of how often those change. we ordered three appetizers including the special corn cake, a chicken dumpling and tom yum soup to share. then, for the main meal, we shared the thai hot pot, duck on board, and spicy noodles. as is usual at thai restaurants we were asked how spicy to make our dishes on a scale of 1 to 10. not knowing the tendencies of the kitchen staff, we asked for everything to be at level 6 - but because we do like very spicy food, we also asked for the hot sauce or powder so we can amp it up if necessary.

the corn fritters were deep fried and extremely greasy. luckily they came with some sort of yellowish liquid with peanut chunks on the side whose acidity cut the greasiness by quite a bit. unfortunately, besides the grease, there was no distinctive flavor to these fritters and they were very disappointing. the chicken dumplings were similarly bland, but the soy sauce based sauce that came with them at least solved that problem. the tom yum soup was satisfyingly hot and had many vegetables and chucks of tofu in it and was tasty. as far as spice level goes, we saw the red powder floating in the broth, but did not notice much of a spice kick to the soup itself.

we chose the duck on board because the waitress assured us that this is the version of duck that would be least fatty. as it turned out, this was one of the two most disappointing things about the meal. the duck was so fatty that we took almost all of the chunks out of the dish and discarded them. they were inedible. this was unfortunate as the dish itself is served with thin noodles in a bowl with a curry based broth that was actually very good. i would have liked more vegetable in there, and, of course, some duck pieces that i could eat, but the base was good.

the spicy noodles were not spicy - they were very salty and had lots and lots of fish sauce as the main flavoring component. too much for my taste. the thai treasure hot pot was another broth based dish which was also very salty, but at least had more different flavors than just salt. all of these dishes were very bland on their spice level. i would characterize them as a 2 on that 'one to ten' scale and we made liberal use of the condiments provided.

we saw one of the other tables get a dessert of black rice and what looked like ripe mangos and decided to order that as well. when it came the rice was significantly undercooked so that it was still crunchy on the inside. the rice was covered by a sweet coconut milk and sugar sauce which lent it much sweetness which was needed to cover the saltiness of the rice. what we thought was sliced mango turned out to be some sort of custard. what it was, i cannot tell you since there were no flavor hints to judge by.

as you can see from my descriptions of the food, the prevailing flavor was salt. one of our members is sensitive to msg - gets headaches from eating it - and by the time we got home, the headache was raging. all of us gulped large quantities of water both at therestaurantas well as when we got back home - another clue that msg was used very liberally.

i guess that when i am in the mood for thai food again, i will still have to drive long distances as thai spoon will not be on my list of places to revisit.

best overallrestaurantin pittsburgh.. at least in my opinion. everything i've ever had here is quality, delectable, perfect. the owner, manager guy is the nicest person you'll meet.

green curry is like, wow, man. heavenly.

go here now.

yummy addition to the south hills!. my husband and i really enjoyed our first visit to thai spoon this past saturday evening. we are so excited that the south hills finally has a thairestaurantso we don't have to drive to shadyside or the north side. my panang curry with chicken was excellent. i ordered a spice level of five and it met my expectations. it is byob so we brought a wonderful bottle of reisling to accompany our meal. our dinners were very affordable. we loved the summer rolls with peanut sauce as the appetizer. therestaurantis very clean and cozy. our server was friendly. it is a smallrestaurantwith only about ten tables or so. therestaurantwas always full during our dinner. the only drawback was how close one sits to other customers due to the small size of the restaurant. therefore we didn't have much privacy during our evening away from the kiddos! the one couple to the right of us were very quiet. however, the table to the left of us chose to talk about their love lives in explicit details during their meal which would have been fine if i didn't feel like i was sitting with them! their discussion almost cost me to lose my appetite. then one of them answered his phone and began talking very loudly! but, the food was so good and that made up for their inappropriate behavior. we wll be back for sure!

good, not the best thai. this is a smallrestaurantthat i hope does well in dormont. the food is acceptable. the pad thai was not as spicy as we ordered, but it was good. my green curry was long on broth and short on vegetables. i has one small piece of eggplant.
the crab rangoons i would not order again,there was no crab detected at all, and the cream cheese was too sweet.
byob is always a good thing, grab a cool six pack and get some thai in dormont!

i have been to thai spoon i few times now and i have loved every dish i have tried. the bangkok seafood has been my favorite. also i re ommend the drunken noodles. therestaurantit's self is very small with 8-10 tables. i would recommend making a reservation or takeout but the service is fantastic when dining in.

i just tried this place for the first time. i got the winter curry. it was very flavorful. i am new to thai food and am still learning the menu items. i love indian and chinese food and thai is similar but has a sweetness to it from the coconut milk (coconut milk is only in some dishes). if you are thinking of trying thai food thisrestaurantis pretty decent.

dinner in dormont. dormont has some good breakfast places, takeout and pizza joints, and even some tasty sandwich shops, but it's seriously lacking in good sit-down dinner food. thai spoon is a great addition to potomac ave. the waiter told me they also have arestaurant-- thai cuisine -- in bloomfield, which i've always enjoyed. the decor is simple, but if you sit by the window you can watch some interesting people walk past. the food is superb and i plan on going back often.