Having built up a loyal following operating out of a Chinatown basement supermarket, Chef May’s Siam Smiles was forced to up sticks by rising rent around the Red Arch, only to reopen last May in the Great Northern Warehouse development. The restaurant isn’t the easiest to find – you head up some steps from street level, then down a walkway past the Odeon. Despite the move, it’s kept the ‘backroom’ aesthetic. The exposed concrete and ventilation pipes coupled with the kitch-y oriental decor wouldn’t look out of place in a hipster Northern Quarter bar, but without the smug this-is-expensive sheen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\nThe menu is the first sign that this is the real deal. It’s brightly coloured, laminated affair, with with a chilli infographic that we assumed was for expressing how spicy you wanted your food, but turned out just to be a warning of things to come. Main dishes ranged from around 7 quid for vegetarian meals to just under 10 for some of the fancier seafood or meat dishes. You’ll find all the hits – pad thai, <\/em>green curry, prawn fried rice, etc. – but also some street food classics you don’t always see in the UK. We ordered pad see eew<\/em> (\u00a38.95) – wide, flat noodles stir-fried with prawns and tom yam<\/em> style sauce – and som tam thai <\/em>(\u00a37.50) – a spicy green papaya salad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our food arrived quickly, served by a friendly young waiter. The som tam<\/em> arrived first: a mountain of shredded green papaya, tomatoes, dried shrimp, peanuts and chillies, all drenched in a sweet and sour fish sauce dressing. I last had this food made by the old woman who ran a som tam <\/em>cart opposite my house in Bangkok, who I swear was either magic or putting something addictive in her salads – so needless to say I had high expectations. Chef May must be in on the secret, because this was the same explosion of pleasingly-lethal chillies and sour-sweet-juicy salad, balanced out by the salty dried shrimp and peanuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Excuse the crap picture quality, the camera didn’t want to come.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n The pad see eew<\/em> arrived not long after the salad, by which point we were craving something to sooth our weak western palates from the spice onslaught of the som tam.<\/em> This was not to be – the noodles packed a punch, although not quite to the same extent. As we started visibly, masochistically suffering from the heat we were brought a tray of yet more types of chilli – which felt somewhere between kindness and mockery. Tom yam <\/em>is usually a hot and sour soup, but here was repurposed as a stir fry sauce that cut through the deliciously chewy noodles excellently. I was impressed by the generously-proportioned, tail-on prawns, but felt more veg would have helped balance an otherwise quite heavy noodle dish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.themunchblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/IMG_20190123_183948-1-1024x768.jpg\")
You know what they say about dishes with big prawns…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n So many places to eat are described as hidden gems – but this one really is. For under a tenner you can get a fresh, tasty meal that hasn’t been changed for British tastes. Go eat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Go if: You want ‘proper’ Thai food without spending a fortune.
Don’t go if: It might not be the best for a strict vegan – there’s fish sauce in abundance here.
How much: \u00a37-\u00a310 for a main.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A supermarket-turned-restaurant delivers authentic Thai goodness <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10,16,17],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-asian","tag-thai","tag-under-10"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/munchblog.helpfulbloke.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/munchblog.helpfulbloke.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/munchblog.helpfulbloke.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munchblog.helpfulbloke.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munchblog.helpfulbloke.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/munchblog.helpfulbloke.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munchblog.helpfulbloke.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/munchblog.helpfulbloke.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munchblog.helpfulbloke.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munchblog.helpfulbloke.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}