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| Hours: | Mon-Thurs Lunch 11-3 Dinner 5-9 Fri Lunch 11-3 Dinner 5-10 Sat Dinner 5-10 Sun Dinner 5-9 |
| Categories: | Thai Restaurants, Carry Out & Take Out, Restaurants |
| Specialities: | Most Items Can Be Made Vegetarian, Carry Out Available |
I love this place! You can't go wrong with the yellow curry dish. The curry puffs are really good too.
One of the best places to eat in Carbondale! Great food, very good prices! Get it hot as you like it!!
Thai Taste is my favorite restaurant in Southern Illinois. The food is awesome. It isn't, however, authentic Thai food. It is sort of Americanized Thai cuisine in the sense that it isn't overly pungent with fermented fish sauce and the piquancy ans spicyiness is dialed way back unless you ask for it.
The restaurant usually starts you out with a complimentary soup. The cabbage soup is incredible, with a spicy, salty and slightly tart broth with green onions. The hot and sour soup is a bit too thick for my taste, though.
They serve the best pad thai I have ever had, and I love the pa nang nua (panang curry beef).
My only problems with the restaurant are with the lunch menu. I only WORK in carbondale, so I am rarely in town for anything other than lunch at Thai Taste. While I have been told that the dinner menu is full of great dishes, the lunch menu is limited to only about 7 entrees and 2 or 3 appetizers. I would have loved to try a green curry chicken dish from this place, but they don't have it at noon.
I was not even allowed to substitute chicken for the beef in the Panang Curry dish-even though they have chicken Pad Thai during these hours. In my opinion, there is no reason that they couldn't have made the substitution..the curry was there, the chicken was there, everything was there.
But they told me that Panang Curry Chicken is a completely different dish than Panang Curry Beef, and Panang Curry Chicken is only available on the dinner menu. They lose a star for that.
They lose another star for their atmosphere and location. The restaurant is very small. I would guess it is 12' by 20' crammed with about 7 booths, 3 tables and 2 tall tables in the windows. There is also a tiny side room with a bar. It's busy there, so it is usually packed full of people.
This makes it a bit noisy. It also makes it difficult to get a table sometimes. Expect a short wait-maybe 10 minutes. This wouldn't be a problem if there was a place to wait. If the 5 barstools are taken, You either have to stand in the doorway or right next to someone's table.
It's also a bit of a pain to get to this restaurant. You have to park across the street and walk. Now, the street you have to cross is US 51- the main highway going through the largest city in Southern Illinois. It's a bit of a pain.
The location has doomed many previous establishments in this building.
The food is good enough that Thai Taste has survived. I think they should consider a move though.