Thai restaurants in London
25 places
101 Thai Kitchen
££A King Street veteran cooking Isaan and Southern in one kitchen, two hundred metres from Khun Pakin.
Addie's Thai
££Trading since 1987 and packed for more than three decades - Bangkok street food in a room that never needed to reinvent itself.
AngloThai
££££Thai cooking built on British seasonal produce rather than imported substitutes - the idea is in the name and it earned a Michelin star.
Chet's
£££Thai flavours through an American diner - an LA-inspired hotel room where the bar snacks and the drinks are doing as much work as the kitchen.
Esarn Kheaw
££London's first Isaan restaurant, open since 1992 and still run by the Puntar family, cooking Ubon dishes nobody else bothers with.
Farang
£££A north London room doing modern Thai with none of the timidity that usually comes with a neighbourhood address.
Flavour Hubb
££Southern Thai cooked inside a badminton club, from a chef with Surat Thani roots, on a menu named after the forest on the Thai-Malaysian border.
Jin-Da Thai
££Northern Thai cooking on a Hammersmith side street, and the room Thai Londoners send people to rather than the ones in Soho.
Khao So-i
£££Named for the northern Thai coconut curry noodle it is built around - the newest room on these lists and already on all of them.
Khun Pakin Thai
££The best of London's Thai-in-a-pub genre, and genuinely raw and fermented Isaan rather than a toned-down version.
Khun Pakin Thai
££Thai food out of a pub kitchen, which in London usually means a bad green curry - here it means fierce Isaan cooking.
Kiln
£££Everything comes off wood and charcoal along a single counter - sit at the bar and the short rib curry is cooked in front of you.
Counter seats are walk-in only and the wait is real. Tables can be booked.
Kolae
£££Southern Thai grilling from the Kiln team - a different regional tradition again, built around charcoal and coconut.
Kruk
££Refuses to pick a region - khao soi from the north, moo hong from the south, som tam from Isaan - and took a Bib Gourmand within months of opening.
Nipa Thai
£££One of the first Thai restaurants in London to charge what the French and Italian rooms charged - plush, polished, and still doing it.
Paolina Thai Cuisine
£Dishes from £5.95, bring your own bottle, and no regional pretensions - central Thai canteen classics done cheaply and properly.
Patara Thai Wimbledon
£££Curries worth the trip and a terrace that makes it a summer booking rather than a winter one.
Plaza Khao Gaeng
££The most doctrinaire Southern Thai kitchen in London, run as a raan khao gaeng where you pick from what is already cooked.
Rabieng Thai
££A long-standing Upper Street room near the Almeida, with generous portions and a BYOB policy that makes it cheaper again.
BYOB - worth knowing before you order drinks.
Singburi
££The Leytonstone cult restaurant reborn in a Shoreditch railway arch under the founders' son, and the Thai restaurant Londoners argue about most.
Smoking Goat
£££Thai drinking food and live-fire cooking in a room that behaves like a bar - the sibling to Kiln and just as loud.
Som Saa
£££Where modern regional Thai cooking in London really starts - founders trained under David Thompson at Nahm, and half the chefs in this guide trace back here.
Speedboat Bar
£££Built to feel like a late-night Bangkok Chinatown canteen, with pool tables, and curries good enough that it was ranked the fourth best restaurant in London.
Supawan
££Understated, consistently good and near King's Cross - the Thai restaurant people return to rather than tick off.
The Begging Bowl
£££Jane Alty trained under David Thompson and cooks northern Thai in Peckham - small plates meant to be ordered across the table.