A tiny Thai restaurant that is quaint, family owned, and truly a hidden neighborhood gem in Washington Heights. The inside has brick walls and large photos of Thailand that lights up. It has limited seating with just handful of tables, and it seems like they do more take-outs and delivery than eat-in at this place.
We came here on one evening for dinner, on week night. They have pretty good selection of appetizers and main dish, but they keep it simple enough so that you don’t get too confusing or overwhelming when looking at their menu. We ordered Beef Salad, Pad Thai, and Crispy Red Snapper to share. Beef Salad ($8.95) has grilled beef, shallots, tomatoes, cucumbers, roasted rice powder and mint mixed with chili lime dressing. The beef was not sliced as thin as some other Thai restaurant, but it still had great flavor. The chili lime dressing had nice little kick of spice, refreshing and great for sharing.
Pad Thai (price differ based on which option you choose) comes with sautéed flat noodle with egg, bean curd, bean sprouts, scallions and crushed peanuts. They offer this dish with basic options, such as Chicken, Tofu, Shrimp, etc.. The interesting options they offer on top of the usual are: Vegetarian Duck, Squid, or Mixed Seafood. How fascinating, I thought. It is always good to have more options so that it can accommodate more customer different preference and needs. We ordered our Pad Thai with chicken for $10.95. Good portion, solid dish, nothing too amazing, but no complaints.
Crispy Red Snapper ($18.95) was incredible. it certainly was the hit of the entire dinner. It was more of a spectacle, it worth every penny. Deep fried whole red snapper with choice of mango salad or three flavor sauce. We chose the three flavor sauce. It came with basic salad underneath which had pineapple, cherry tomato, and so on. I liked how they added the pineapple which gives sweetness to the dish. The fish was amazing, crispy outside and moist inside, super flavorful, great dish to share! Even though the sauce seems really dark and therefore you might think it is really strong, but it really was not so strong, and the fish is so good that you don’t really need the extra flavor from the sauce anyways.
We tried one dessert, Homemade Taro Cake with Ice Cream ($5). Nice texture and flavor, nice big scoop of ice cream, rich and dense, pretty good, and you can’t beat the price. It actually was much nicer than expected, we fully enjoyed it.
This restaurant is a nice, cozy place to get some authentic Thai food, perfect for relaxing and chilling out with your friend and loved ones to share and enjoy the delicious Thai cuisine!
Tung Thong Thai – 561 W 169th St, New York, NY 10032