Pad Thai - a filling option for just 8. 90€
If you are a fan of museums and you want to tackle the route through the Barrio de Las Letras, which includes the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, the CaixaForum, and the most important classical art museum in Spain, the Prado Museum, this restaurant will be a lifesaver from the hunger these will give you!
(This is what it looks like from the outside, so you can make up your own mind as to whether you feel like going in or not. )
In the Barrio de Las Letras, there are lots of fast food restaurants like McDonalds, Burger King or 100 Montaditos, but sometimes you just feel like eating something that is going to satisfy your hunger a bit more at a reasonable price. In Madrid, restaurants more or less charge 15€ for a meal (and these are the cheaper places! ). We found ourselves leaving CaixaForum when a Thai restaurant just next to it caught our attention: Pad Thai.
On the menu, there were lots of tempting options, but we ended up going for the menu of the day that was only 8€, working out at roughly around $9. 50, which is a really good price. The service there is quite quick and the food is delicious (although nothing spectacular), so the the price-quality ratio is very good!
Next, I will talk to you a bit about what we ate there, so that you can see the true quality of the dishes. Truthfully, in my personal opinion, everything on their menu is highly recommendable and is relatively filling. I think that it will be one of the cheapest restaurants that you'll find in this area given the quality of the food.
Starter
My friend, Maya, came from Mexico to visit me, so it's for this reason that we ate out, as I would usually cook at home to save some money. During my six months in Madrid, I think I ate in more expensive restaurants maybe five or six times. We both ordered the same starter, chicken skewers with peanut sauce, which I think, on the menu itself, was called 'Chicken Satay Skewers'. They tasted good and the portion size was decent. The peanut wasn't very well ground and sometimes you could even chew it, but, in reality, that wasn't so important as it didn't affect the taste of the skewers, which were generally tasty (although the entire dish was a bit greasier than we expected).
(Our chicken satay skewers with our complementary drinks in the background. I like this photo because you can see the true size of the portions and the drinks. )
Drink included
Another point in favour of this restaurant is that the drinks come included in the price of your meal, be that a soft drink or an iced tea in a 600ml bottle. They bring you a glass with ice for your drink because the heat in Madrid during the summer can exceed extreme temperatures. If it ends up being like this when you visit, you can order another drink from the menu; just remember that it would cost you around 2€ or 3€ (around $2 more or less), which, despite not being really cheap, it's in line with the prices at all the restaurants in Madrid.
Main course
For the main course, we ordered 'Bangkok rice', which was served in a small bowl, making it seem like there wasn't actually that much of it. However, my friend poured it onto her plate to mix it with her chicken satay, and there was a significant amount of rice in the end. The combination of the rice with the Thai chicken and peanut sauce is recommendable - it tastes even better like this than the rice does on its own. Although the rice was good, it was a little oily for my liking. In general, the flavour was quite nice.
(The rice was served in this bowl. I wanted to eat it separately from my pad thai, but my friend ate it together with her chicken satay, which you can see on the plate in the background of the photo. )
For my main course, I ordered a pad thai (yes, like the name of the restaurant) with noodles, a kind of fried pasta that accompanies the dish. This dish is something typically Thai, so it's for this reason that the restaurant bears the same name. I have been fortunate enough to eat in other Thai restaurants in my country, Mexico, and I realised that this particular pad thai didn't look very similar to the ones I have eaten in other places. In theory, a pad thai consists of rice noodles with tofu and shrimps. As you can see in the photo, the dish was practically all noodles with a sparing amount of shrimps, nothing more. It needed more tofu, more wheat germ and more rice, so I wouldn't personally consider it to be a very authentic "Thai" restaurant, given that their food is sometimes made with too much oil and the taste of some dishes reminded me more of Chinese food. Although this is not a truly authentic pad thai, its taste was by no means unpalatable, but if there is something that has to be pinpointed, it's that it lacked the true Thai touch. But, I don't want to drive you away from the restaurant by saying this. I will say, however, if you do go there, you can order it without the fear of being disappointed because you won't be. I just think that I was quite a harsh critic when it came to this particular dish.
(My pad thai. When I took this photo, I hadn't eaten any of it. It seems like there isn't that much food, but it was honestly really filling. )
My friend, Maya, chose the Thai-style meat dish that came in a dark, caramelised sauce (like soy sauce almost) accompanied by veal (if I remember correctly, but I am sure that it was veal) and red pepper with cooked carrots. I tried my friend's meal and it was okay, but nothing out of this world. She chose to mix her meal with the Bangkok rice that they gave us in the bowl, and, in all honesty, the mix of the two tasted better than the meal on its own. Despite it looking like a small portion of food in the photos, you really end up feeling full, which I think is thanks to the deceptively large quantity of rice.
(My friend's Thai-style meat dish before mixing it with the rice. She didn't want to wait to take the photo before eating it and had already taken a few bites at this point. )
(When she finally made the wise decision to mix her meal with the rice that she had left. )
Dessert
My friend and I ordered two different desserts to share between us so that we could try more things, which is what I would always recommend when you are in another country and go to a restaurant. Always order a couple of different dishes so that you can share and try new things - you won't regret it.
I think the whole sharing food to "try new things" doesn't apply when it comes to desserts, as were expecting some kind of typical Thai dessert like Khao Tom Mad, which consists of steamed rice wrapped in banana leaves, or some delicious sticky rice with mango, made with mango, coconut milk and rice. I personally like Thai food and I like desserts, so I was expecting to be offered typical Thai desserts. I still need to try Bua Loi Phuak, which consists of taro balls and coconut cream. Another Thai dessert that I have made in my house (and for this reason have tried it) was Sakoo Piek, a boiled pudding with tapioca balls. In short, there are an infinite number of Thai-style desserts, but what they brought us was unexpected, and I don't mean that in a good way. What did they bring us, you may ask? (*suspenseful music*)... Vanilla ice-cream and flan! In what way are these Thai? I asked the same thing...
To tell the truth, they weren't at all bad... there's no way that vanilla ice-cream can't taste nice, nor flan, but with it being a Thai restaurant, we were expecting something a bit more exotic.
(The ice-cream that Maya ordered. )
(The flan that I ordered. )
Design and service in the restaurant
The restaurant's decor is not at all ugly, it's nice and simple, but you equally wouldn't think that you've just walked into a Thai restaurant if you just look at how it's decorated. Although, mind you, half of the waiters look Asian, so maybe the food isn't very Thai, but at least the waiters are... although shouldn't it be the other way round?
The front part of the restaurant only has exotic lamps, nothing else. If you walk a little further into the restaurant and head towards the back, you will find the more "Thai"-style decor that you were expecting: lamps, lights, furniture, and decoration on the walls.
(The front part of the restaurant, which seemed to have a more formal style of decor, in my opinion. )
(The rear part of the restaurant, which has a style that is a little more Thai. )
(A table for two in the middle of the restaurant. )
With regards to the service, we cannot complain at all, as the waiting staff were very friendly, which is something that I have personally found strange in Madrid, as waiters have often served us in a bad mood, although this is subjective because us Latinos are extremely friendly. The waiters at Pad Thai are always smiling and they bring you your meals really quickly, which is something that falls in the restaurant's favour, as a tourist who is very hungry and time-constrained (like us) would love it.
Conclusion
I arrived at Pad Thai feeling very hungry and with zero expectations because, after visiting two museums, the only thing that we wanted to do was eat, and this particular restaurant was our first option. Their menu of the day is both affordable and tasty, with the food leaving you feeling very satisfied. However, if you go to Pad Thai with expectations of eating 100% authentic Thai food, maybe it won't meet these per se and you'll leave feeling somewhat cheated. If, on the other hand, you come to Pad Thai feeling hungry and you are a tourist willing to spend a little more money, you will leave happy, knowing that you spent little in exchange for a delicious, good quality meal. I think that in the restaurant, like in life, everything is based on your own personal expectations, especially when they are so high or low when you arrive.
The restaurant's location is one of its strongest points because it is situated within Barrio de Las Letras, close to the city's museums, close to Atocha (where the most important train and metro station in Madrid is), and crossing the street is the beautiful Buen Retiro Park. I don't think that you will need to necessarily "search" for the restaurant because you will find it almost immediately, as it's just a couple of blocks from the CaixaForum, making it near enough impossible not to see it.
