Sawadee Thai Restaurant

I have eaten here on many occasions and have always received great service and lovely food (even accommodating us coming in late or needing to rush off early).

I always recommend this place to friends looking for Thai food in Brighton.
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Overall rating
Food 9 | Service 9 | Atmosphere 9 | Value for money 9
Thursday, July 22, 2010

My wife and I went here very recently and had an absolute shocker of a meal with terrible service. We had to ask for menus, our starters arrived before our drinks (and even our plates!). The food was not great to say the least. The tempura had the consistency of chip shop batter (heavy and very greasy) and the mains were greasy and not a patch on a Thai meal we had eaten in Manchester the previous week. Sorry guys, won't be going back.
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ES
Overall rating
Food 5 | Service 2 | Atmosphere 3 | Value for money 2
Tuesday, April 20, 2010

We have visited this restaurant with our parents and couldn't fault the service or the food. My other is disabled and when we found it difficult to park the Manager told us we should phone and let him know and he would park his car in a space and reserve it for us!

We preferred the starters and picked several. The coconut prawns were lovely and the cashew nuts with the seaweed was a nice touch rather than it being drowned in salt which is what we have received in other chinese/thai restaurants. The mussels were excellent and the soup that they came in was divine and we had to drink it!

We had a duck dish for main and it was excellent and rich with lots of sauce. We also had a sweet and sour chicken dish which was lovely. The Thai Green curry was very hot and spicy. We also had some friend special rice with beef and there were large chunks of beef in it.

The wine was very good and not overly expensive and very quaffable.

A thorough good night and we will definitely be going back again!
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Kazza
Overall rating
Food 10 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 10 | Value for money 9
Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Tried Sawadee out for the first time on Saturday night - I wasn't expecting much as my experiences of Thai food in Brighton have been terrible to date. The Red Snapper at Seven Dials is popular for one reason only (it's bring your own bottle). Sukothai on Middle Street is really bad too, awful service, bad food, very disappointing.

So Sawadee was beyond a pleasant surprise. Very friendly staff welcomed us in on a freezing night and we snagged a table straightaway. We started with Thai fishcakes, Khanom jeeb (steamed pork dumplings) and a terrific Green papaya and chilli salad. The dumplings came without a dipping sauce which was a shame, but the zingy dressing on the salad which we ate alongside more than made up for that.

For mains I had a Sweet and sour prawn dish with coconut rice, my friend a Duck curry with sticky rice. The curry had bags of flavour and the duck was succulent and gamey - plus they'd cut all the blubbery fat off which actually pleased me a lot. Some fat-lovers may consider the removal of duck fat downright sacrilege!

House red at £9.95 a bottle was perfectly drinkable - we left drunk, stuffed and happy. I'll definitely go back.
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BrightonSuz
Overall rating
Food 9 | Service 9 | Atmosphere 8 | Value for money 8
Monday, February 01, 2010

During a stay in Brighton for my boyfriend's birthday, we thought we would give this restaurant a try after having a look around for somewhere to eat. We were extremely impressed with the service Sawadee gave us. The food was delicious and the friendly service we received was 5 star! We spent a good 2 hours there, finishing our drinks and chatting, we felt welcome and comfortable the whole time and they even brought out a compliementry drink and pudding to celebrate my boyfriends birthday.

Will definitley recommend this restaurant to anyone going to the area.
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Sam
Overall rating
Food 9 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 10 | Value for money 10
Wednesday, January 06, 2010

This is definitely up there on our favourites list for eating out and for recommending to our hotel guests.

We've eaten here since it opened in 2002 and the service and quality has rarely dropped below excellent (OK one or two off nights in 8 years is to be expected).

Izzet, the owner, is friendly and totally customer focused. He's a whirlwind and the restaurant will probably look different every time you go because he cannot sit still.

The mixed starters are our favourite but for an alternative we often go for the grilled slices of beef (with a fierce sauce) or Queen of Thai soup. For mains the steamed fish is excellent, our George loves the stewed ribs and I have something different every time! Tofu is fantastic and I'm not veggie. I even love the sticky rice because it is quite plain and goes really well with some of the spicier mains - such as the chicken with garlic and ginger.

Altogether a friendly and good value for money place. My partner and I celebrated our 25th anniversary here.
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avalonbrian - View all reviews by this user
Overall rating
Food 9 | Service 9 | Atmosphere 9 | Value for money 9
Friday, January 01, 2010

What a lovely restaurant, the food was superb and will visit on a regular basis when next in Brighton.
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Lorraine Young
Overall rating
Food 10 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 9 | Value for money 10
Saturday, September 05, 2009

i've been there so many times i lost count :)

is the best thai in brighton in my opinion!!!

the staff polite n helpfull reasonable price!!!!
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Juliana Egan
Overall rating
Food 10 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 10 | Value for money 10
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

It looked really nice from the outside but the actual experience was a different story.

SERVICE:

- The waiter took half of our drinks order and then disappeared.

- Asked for crackers three times for it to arrive.

- Gave some of us the wrong drinks.

- Food took over an hour to arrive.

- Gave us the wrong dish first.

- The waiter passed a burning hot plate to my friend and she got a nasty shock.

- The waitresses just forced their way and the dishes onto the table, and then just slapped them on without telling (or knowing ... coz we had to ask) what the dishes were. I saw the waitress had her finger in the food when serving at one point.

- Overcharged by £10 on my friend's credit card, but they did refund it without hesitation to be fair.

FOOD:

- The batter on the fried food was soggy and really oily, I presumne the oil wasn't hot enough when they were fried.

- Soup tasted like it was out of a can.

- The fish in the fish curry was dry as cardboard.

- Other meat in the dishes were way overcooked - dry and chewy.

- Sticky rice was crusty and ... like old rice.

I really wanted it to be good because the place looked so cute but I was deeply disappointed. I guess you have to experience the bad to appreciate the good.
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Joe
Overall rating
Food 0 | Service 0 | Atmosphere 3 | Value for money 0
Sunday, June 07, 2009

Lovely little restaurant in the centre of Kemptown. Tasty food and good service. Good value for money and worth a visit. I think the atmosphere would have been better if there were more customers - guess we happened to be there on a quiet night.
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Overall rating
Food 7 | Service 8 | Atmosphere 6 | Value for money 7
Wednesday, March 18, 2009