Vientiane
Food: Laotion, Thai, Vietnamese
Location: Pattaya Tai (click on this link for a map)
Price: Medium – Expensive (A bit on the expensive side for this type of food, but still not too bad)
Rating: 4/5
Vientiane Restaurant
A friend of mine had been bugging me to try Vientiane’s fried banana dessert, so finally we made an outing of it and came together with his wife for the entire meal and hopefully the dessert if we could manage.
It’s located on Pattaya Tai. If you turn West onto Pattaya Tai from 3rd road it’s not too far down and on your left. I want to say it’s Soi 20, but I can’t be sure. The Vientiane restaurant sits alone in a large parking lot and probably will have a few big tourists buses carrying many Asian tourists.
The food in the Vientiane Restaurant consists of traditional Thai, Lao/Isaan, Vietnamese, and European food. Absolutely everything I tried (my own orders as well as my friends) tasted good to great. Their menu is divided up between these different types of foods and makes it really easy to find what you’re interested in.
There are a few different places to sit. There’s the main area which an open-air setting with a lot of room. There are places to eat upstairs and there’s also some inside rooms too. We sat in the main open-air area.
View of the Vientiane restaurant from our table
I always love some good oysters. I have to say though that this may have been the weakest part of our meal. They had a small fishy taste to them. Not really enough to make them taste bad, but enough to make me worry about how fresh they were.
Fried spring rolls from the Vietnamese menu. These are delicious. I’ve actually ordered these from their delivery service with Door 2 Door because I’d remembered how great they are. The honey/peanut dip really hits the spot.
Here you can see my friend’s wife testing out the fried spring rolls and their tasty sauce. Also in the picture is some chicken fried rice and panang curry, both of which tasted perfect.
Fried shrimp in curry sauce w/coconut milk. Very tasty, but they leave the shell and legs on which is a SEA thing. I’d rather have them off, but you can eat it whole because it’s pretty crunchy.
Baked mussels w/cheese and Isaan duck w/lemon flavoring. The mussels are addictive. My favorite of the meal. The duck isn’t bad, but it takes some work to get the meat off the bone. Not because it’s tough, but because the bones are curved and tricky to work around.
Thai style fish…delicious
Fried banana w/ice cream and either honey or syrup. Really good and REALLY rich.
Once we finally finished and received the bill it came out to around 2500baht. I thought that was a decent price for the amount of food we ordered plus the amount of beer we drank.
All the food in the Vientiane restaurant was good, the service was good, and it’s not too far out of the way.
I can easily recommend the Vientiane restaurant for a great night out with some company.
