Orchid House Thai Restaurant

We had lunch at the Orchid House Thai restaurant today. It’s a buffet about $ 10.00 and a buck for tea. This was the best Thai food we’ve found in a long time. You fix your own soup at the soup station with noodles, chicken, beef, cilantro, onions, bean sprouts and beef broth you spoon over your selected ingredients. It had the same taste as the kway teow I got from street vendors in Thailand. This was just the start. Pad Thai, Larb, nam sod, and about a dozen other dishes all with true Thai flavor were available. I been to every Thai restaurant in the Ft Walton Beach area and this is the best I have found since Sir Sandwich closed. You have to have been here a long time to know about Sir Sandwich but it was the absolute best. Orchid House Thai Buffet is almost as good.

I went between lunch and dinner around 3pm. The food was very good and quick comeing out. I wouldn’t say the best Thai food I’ve ever had but definately good. The décor of the place was very nice and unique. Price was very reasonable and I will go back.

Lunch buffet, food is above average. Tastes like a Chinese buffet. If you buy a drink it will be about $ 11 out the door out the door. Friendly staff, but too much for the buffet

Best Thai food in Ft. Walton area! I love Thai food and have been to several Thai restaurants in the area, as there are many. This one is the best with most flavor in their food. Every dish I have eaten there is great. It is also very clean and the prices are very reasonable.

After a very long morning in the office I was starved. A coworker and I decided to eat here. Buffets are ok but I’m always skeptical about them. I don’t have the proper words to describe this place. Just awful. Most of the main meals were some crumbled up hamburger meat with a sauce on it. Everything was extremely dry. Needless to say I left starved. I do not recommend this place to anyone.

They have a great buffet at lunchtime, and everything is very tasty! Everything here has always been very good! They have another location on Mary Esther Cutoff that is just as good! Highly recommended!

I’m updating my previous review to remove a star. My experiences here over the past several months have not been as good as in the past. The food the last several times I went was very «uneventful.» There was a general lack of good flavor that Thai cuisine is popular for.

You know those meals that you have that are just unremarkable and leaves you wishing that you sort of didn’t have it? I had one of those here. The beef red curry lacked the creamy consistency that you’d expect. It was more like a vapid soup. The sort that you’d find at a Thai buffet in this area. The service was also spotty. When we came here, we were the only table. While taking our order, she stopped in the middle of it and walked away for a good 5 – 10 minutes before coming back and finishing with the order, leaving us with menus open and just hanging there. Not sure what the pressing business is but it was certainly less than professional.

Easily the WORST thai I’ve EVER had. Ordered a simple pepper steak dish that I couldn’t be more disappointed about. The rice doubled the portion of the entrée, it was served room temperature, and the taste was flat-​out bland. Bland Thai Food? How’s that even possible? Go to Thai Hut up the street. 1000x better.

Amazing. Reasonably-​priced delicious Thai food. All of the familiar dishes (pad Thai, massaman curry) are just a little bit different (better!) than usual, and the more exotic ones are scrumptious as well. From what I hear, very authentic as well. Don’t let the emptiness fool you!

I love this place. I love spicy food and they always seem to have the ratio just right. My hubby says they make the best fried rice he’s ever eaten. I usually get the house special and that is what I’d recommend. I’ve also had the pad Thai. That was also tasty if you like nuts. If you are into vegetables, this is an excellent choice to flavor them up.

Not good. I had the Pad Thai, red curry, and panang curry. Very salty!

We were visiting and found this restaurant near by. Everything we ordered was great! We had cinnamon duck, basil fry rice, pad sew dew and seafood salad. The portion is just right and reasonably priced.

WTF is up with the high reviews? I can honestly say that this is the worst buffet I’ve ever had. EVER! I left hungry, couldn’t bear to try another bite. 12:00pm sharp on a Friday, the buffet carts were stocked.
Here is what I had from the buffet and a breakdown on each;
***a caveat… all items were at room temperature, ICK!***
Chicken curry (white curry), the sauce had good flavor but the chicken was so over cooked that the texture was like wet cardboard. I really wanted this one to be good but no dice.
Spring roll, typical frozen fare fried too long and left cold. I ate half of one and refrained from spitting it back on my plate ala Chef Ramsey.
Fried Green Beans, I tried a small portion and they weren’t bad, I saw a server come out with a fresh batch so I grabbed another spoonful. As I put them on my plate a very long black hair trailed from the spoon to my plate. I handed the plate to a server and she said that a customer must have dropped it. I didn’t ask for an explanation, she just offered it up. So I didn’t get to try the fresh beans.
Chicken Fried Rice, I was scrapping the pan to get a small amount. The rice was over cooked and the flavor overall was just ho-​hum. Cold.
Thai Beef Salad: I’m really spoiled on this dish, this is normally my favorite thai dish. I try it everywhere I go. I was surprised to see it on a buffet, in fact it was this alone that made me choose the buffet over menu. I should have left it on the buffet, it looked better there than it tasted on my plate. It is supposed to be served cold and seeing how everything was cold they actually nailed that portion of the dish. Really cheap beef cuts, too much cilantro and limp veggies veggies made this dish gross.
The «dessert bar» had what looked like two kinds of a bean type pudding? Generic bottom shelf cookies from the supermarket and some sliced cantaloupe and honeydew. I skipped it. Simply didn’t appeal to me, maybe if they were served as complimentary bar food at 3am I might give it a second look.
Four other couples were dining at the same time, not a good turn out for a noon buffet. Should have been the first sign.

Great Thai food! Can’t go wrong with the curries or pad thai. Their lunch buffet is surprisingly delicious as well. My hubby and I also love the papaya salad. I prefer to go here for dinner over the lunch buffet, but I’ve yet to be disappointed either way.

The food here in Ft. Walton is amazing and last time I was here, I definitely hit up all the major places. On my second trip here I’ve been wanting to try some of the more hole-​in-​the-​wall local places. That is pretty much what Orchid House is. The decoration skims the line between tacky and decent and the location is hidden away in a strip-mall…BUT, that being said, the food was awesome!
I got the Tea Rose dumplings and they were tender and tasty and wonderful. I followed that with the House Spicy Special, which I thoroughly enjoyed but do not order if you don’t like spice! It was definitely spicy and had me sweating by the end of the plate but it wasn’t an overpowering burn, which was actually quite pleasant.
The food aside, the prices are amazingly low for what you get and the service was very friendly and fast. I was there on a night when the only other night waitress was at home with a sick child and the kitchen assistant was taking orders, cooking, serving, ringing people up, and cleaning; all with a smile, a kind word, and good efficiency. I was pretty impressed and a nice wait staff can sometimes make all the difference!
Looks are definitely deceiving in this place and I highly recommend stopping. I know they have gotten mixed reviews for their slightly sub-​par lunch buffet, but dinner was great… check it out!

I really like the idea of a Thai buffet, unfortunately most of the food on the buffet was just mediocre, with watery sauces. The best were the non-​fried spring rolls, but they were being grabbed as soon as they came out. I would go back, but not until I try Lotus Thai’s buffet.

Pad thai was ok and really cheap for that portion.

Disclaimer: I’m half Thai, so I know my Thai food.
I came here with the parents on a weekday to devour their lunch buffet. It consisted of three buffet carts (2 main courses, 1 dessert) with about 8 dishes per cart. Not too bad, but not too impressive either.
The food consisted of your usual staples: panang chicken, chicken curry (yellow), lo mein, stir-​fried glass noodles, fried rice, white rice, egg rolls, assorted vegetable medleys, etc. Therefore, I wouldn’t exactly call the food options inspiring. Yes, yes, I get it – they are catering to mostly a Caucasian crowd so of course they’re going to serve a ton of crowd pleasers… but it doesn’t matter. I have to call a spade a spade. The food is worth 3 stars though.
The buffet price ($ 7.95 per person) is a little unfair in my opinion. It’s definitely fair if you get there between 11 am – 12 pm since the buffet is fresh and most importantly, stocked. If you come after 12:30ish (when it’s the most crowded), it is slim pickings as they don’t refill the buffet line, especially if you come for a late lunch (1 pm – 2 pm). Seriously, if they are going to serve less food as the lunch hour progresss, they should drop the price accordingly… just like I’m dropping an extra star rating.

I ordered a red curry dish. The food was good; not the best Thai I’ve had. The server was not very attentive, even though there were only 3 tables being served. The prices are reasonable, but I’ll try some other Thai restaurants before coming back here.