Siam Bistro

Excellent authentic Thai food. Great wait staff and a generally nice restaurant. You’ll need reservations if you want a spot it’s small and fills up so quickly! And not expensive only about 13 – 15 $ per plate and they are big!

Warning to vegetarians. Some servers will not tell you the truth about what items contain meat. ALL THE SOUPS contain chicken or fish broth.

Good food, nice clean atmosphere. The yellow chicken curry I’d give a 3/​5, but the noodle curry with beef from the lunch menu was a solid 4.5÷5 — this was a special dish!

This is my favorite Tai restaurant in Ottawa! I went there with Deirdre K, Jim D, and Vanessa D. We tried the Pad Tai, Laab salad (spicy ground chicken on lettuce), mango salad, curry chicken dish and a side of white rice. All of the dishes were delicious! My favorite was the Pad Tai, the noodles were cooked perfectly (not too hard, no too soft) and the seasoning was wonderful.
This place is a MUST-​TRY!

This is my favourite Thai restaurant in Ottawa! My partner and I come here for all our anniversaries and birthdays! We discovered this by accident– we were looking for a place to eat after going to a play at the GCTC a block away. And we have kept coming back here for the last four years!
The food is exceptional– tasty, fresh, and flavourful! We love the shrimp/​pineapple curry that’s served in a pineapple– it is possibly one of the tastiest Thai dishes I have ever eaten!
The staff is very helpful, the service is quick, the drinks are wonderful (I would recommend the piña colada), and décor is beautiful! I couldn’t ask for more!

Good food, good price. Seating leaves much to be desired but hey can’t have everything.

Thai food is my favorite. I could live on it and eat it every day. I am a frequent patron of Siam Bistro, you simply cannot go wrong with anything on their menu. I usually always order the Shrimp Phad Thai because Phad Thai is my favourite dish of all time but also because they put a ton of shrimps in and the portion size is so big I can take some home! I find it really difficult to convince myself to order anything else because I’m so addicted but the last few times I have and what can I say? Everything is so good! I love their curries as well, and their Tom Kha Gai soup!

The veggie green curry was amazing. The eggplant was too sweet. Vegetarian options pretty decent. Problem was the horrible service. The server came and basically was very abrupt and rude. We got 2 dishes of the 3 we originally ordered and in over an hour they didn’t come check up on us. We tried flagging the servers down, but to no avail. In the end, we were waterless for 45 mins and were still missing that last dish (which they cancelled after we finally got their attention). The restaurant was evidently understaffed and so if you ever go here, get take out.

Authentic Thai food at this place. I found the curry to be excellent. Pad Thai had a little too much sauce for my personal taste, but it was still well made. Will definitely be back

We started with the spring rolls and tom kha goong. The spring rolls tasted really fresh. The soup was hot and tasty. Needed a bit more sour but still good and fiery.
Next we got the pad woon sen (chicken with clear noodles and vegetables), goong pad prik (shrimp with chillies, pepper, pineapple), ook gai tood (thai fried chicken) with dipping sauce. Only the thai fried chicken was good. The pineapple shrimp had good ingredients but the sauce was too sweet. The pad woon sen barely had any noodles or chicken but was mostly onion. We asked for more noodles but was told they could not provide more. Here’s how the conversation went after that:
Siam: Other customers don’t complain.
Us: Well, we’re complaining… so either spend 30 cents and give us more noodles or we’d like to send it back.
Siam: You can’t send it back.
Us: Then we’ll leave now and not pay.
So they finally took it back and we ordered the tang tak noodles (fried noodles with chicken) which was actually good once we added some chilies to it.
This place only has ice cream for dessert which is unfortunate for a thai place but the ice cream was fantastic! They have mango and coconut and I found some mango fibre which is a good sign and the coconut seemed to have pieces of young coconut in it. It was creamy and rich.
Their main dishes seem to have gone downhill and I would say they are average now for Ottawa thai food. I used to love their food. The way they dealt with us when we were not happy with a dish was very unprofessional. «Other people like it» is not a useful comment. It was obvious they had run out of clear noodles. I would still go back just for the ice cream though! I asked if they made their own but they order it. Now I just have to find out where they get it.

Best place for Thi food. Owner is always there to make sure every client is satisfied. Very tasty food. Spicy but awesome. Its our go to place when we crave for Asian food. This place is clean and the atmosphere is just amazing!

This was an interesting experience… We went here for an office lunch, at the recommendation of others who have been here. The weather is getting cooler, and soup and warm food are definitely on the horizon if not already on the agenda!
It’s hard getting our little group organized to attend an event, but we did finally manage to pin down a date and a local favourite for the venue. First of all, you definitely DO need a reservation! This place is tiny but it was fully packed! They know how to handle the lunch crowd and they are quick with the service. We were seated at a table for 7 although we were 8 (which they knew before we got there). The slight mistake was easily remedied. They offer a special lunch menu, which has a good variety, and it’s not overly pricy, in the range of about $ 10 each. A couple of the dishes are splcy, most offer rice as a side dish, and one of them offered egg noodles, which was what I ordered. This one was not noted as spicy, but it was pleasantly spiced (more than I usually eat). It was nice. And the bonus was that each dish came with a bowl of broth beforehand, which definitely was spicy! Tasty, though.
The amazing thing was that we arrived at noon, and had finished our mains by 12:30! Talk about speedy!

I absolutely adored this place. From the perfect décor and intimate dining space to the perfect Pad Thai and lovely staff, this place gets it right on all levels.
My sister and I decided to pop in here when we had a Thai craving, and read Vanessa D’s review. We showed up at 5 p.m. on the dot, and thankfully the place was empty. It filled up in a matter of minutes though! This place clearly has a good reputation. While we were seated we had a chance to check out the beautiful artwork (most of which is for sale) and admire the décor (gold ceilings are my favourite!).
The place almost looks like two long community tables, but they’re actually separate (though I’m sure they can be pushed together for bigger parties). As I said, the place filled up fast, even so early, so be sure to make reservations here is you’re more than a group of two.
In terms of food, I was very pleasantly surprised. My sister and I split the shrimp Pad Thai, green curry with eggplant, and two orders of spring rolls, one veggie and the other shrimp. I adored it all. The Pad Thai was definitely my favourite, as I find it’s a hard dish for me to adore, but this one I loved! It had the perfect balance of tanginess and the veggies and shrimp were all cooked perfectly.
I can’t wait to come back here again! It would be a lovely spot for a special occasion or date night.

Best Thai food in Ottawa. In a city of frankly mediocre eating options, Siam Bistro is a nice little haven of culinary decadence.
Amazing mango salad, curries, and soups. Love the Tom Kha here, big fan of the boar curry. Have been over a dozen times and I don’t even live in the city — try it out — always a memorable experience.

Best Thai in Ottawa. Pad Thai, coconut milk soup with shrimp and mushrooms, seafood dishes, all phenomenal. Authentic flavours. Beware of asking for something spicy, they keep it real here. Cheap beer. No nonsense service.

Finally came around to trying this place after hearing rave reviews from friends. I thought it was ok and average in terms of Thai in the city.
The décor is very quaint and the communal like setting with the long rows of tables was cute. Nice art on the walls too.
We had the fish cakes to start, mixed seafood with vegetables and Panang chicken with steamed rice. The fish cakes were a bit chewy. The seafood plate was good — basically a stir fry with soy sauce. The Panang chicken was our favourite — good balance of red curry and peanut sauce.
Overall, it tasted good but the spice level was low. It also took 3 reminders before my husband got his beer. I’d give if another try but wasn’t wowed.

This is our favourite Thai restaurant in the whole city. We discovered it this time last year through friends and have gone 5 or 6 times since. We recommend the mango salad. It’s really spicy and tangy and full of plump shrimp. We also get the Tom ka gai soup, and it’s flavours are subtle and rich. The pad Thai is delicious and complex. We also highly recommend the chicken pa nang (red curry).
The service is typically good, even when they’re busy. They also provide take away.

Add this to my «places within walking distance of my house that I had planned to go to a while ago but never got around to» or PWWDOMHTHIPTGTWNGAT list. (I know the acronym is a mouthful but as a government employee I couldn’t resist). Acronyms aside, I can’t believe I had taken this long to go here as it is one of the best Thai places I have been to, not just in Ottawa but anywhere.
Siam Bistro is a small restaurant near Wellington & Holland. The interior is really beautiful with all sorts of great art work, and the entry way (although can be a bit cramped) has all sorts of neat info. The service was very good, although there were only 2 people working for the entire place and one was doing Maitre D work so they were very frantic and sometimes could be a bit hard to flag down, but they were very friendly and helpful.
Now to the food, wow, it is absolutely amazing. I had a pad kee maow (noodles, beef, vegetables, egg, & chili) and it was absolutely amazing, the flavours were perfectly balanced and it was really amazing, and the portion sizes are quite large. My friend had a curry that he really liked, although they charged $ 2 extra for rice (which is a star off in my books). Be warned, if you are sensitive to spicy food, anything with one star of spiciness on the menu is not for you, my one star dish was quite spicy. The prices are very good for the quality of the food, I was expecting to pay a lot more for food of that quality.
One last word of warning is that reservations are a very good idea. I arrived at 8 PM on a Wednesday and it was nearly full, Thursday-​Sunday will be nigh on impossible to get a table without a reservation.

Great food, lovely service, very authentic.
I’m sorry, but I have completely forgotten what I ordered, but I do remember that it was a huge serving, I love it, and took the left overs home.
The friend I was with very much enjoyed his meal as well!
Try anything on the menu, I guarantee you will love it!

My favourite Thai restaurant in Ottawa, and the best Thai food I’ve had anywhere. Be prepared to spend about $ 25 per person. Every dish I’ve tried has been wonderful. Seating is limited, so I’d recommend making a reservation.