Sticky Rice Thai & Laotian Cuisine

I wish I found it earlier! I tried pad Thai and chilli and garlic fish and they are so delicious. Also the size of dishes are more than others in Ithaca. The mango sticky rice is also a good choice for dessert.

Incredibly tasty Thai and Laotian food. The food is authentic, and they make it as spicy as you want. This is by far my favorite place to get Thai and Laotian food in Ithaca. Though it’s hard for me to pick favorites, I really love the Laab moo, the papaya salad, Laotian crispy rice, and all of their curries. Oh and the mango sticky rice for dessert is amazing. They’ve also been updating the restaurant, repainting/​decorations, and I’ve been told more menu items and lunch hours. The owner and staff are wonderful, very friendly people.
In addition to tasty food, as a graduate student I appreciate it being more on the affordable side when compared to some other places in/​around the commons. In the past I found sometimes service can be slow, I recommend picking up your order as opposed to delivery. Atmosphere may not be fancy enough for some, but the food is difficult to beat.

Delivery service is awful. Called for an order and they could not give me an estimated time for delivery. I waited for two hours and I was starting by the time the cold food arrived. I do not recommend for delivery at all. Really disappointed

I ordered for the pad Thai (chicken) and spring roll.
The taste was good. The portion size seemed too less for the price.
Landed up being one very expensive dinner for the quantity and taste.
Overall, its okay. May not order again.

i love this place! it’s so nice to be able to order authentic thai food. you can’t find sticky rice many different places. my husband and i have tried several different dishes and they are all good. i love the squid stirfry.

Wife got the pad Thai which was standard. Nothing to rave about but nothing to write a negative review. I got the sausage with the purple rice. The rice was obviously sticky and crunchy. First time have rice cooked like that and was very good. The sausage was too salty and very tough. I was okay with the food. Although, customer service was great. The owner was very attentive with all the customers.

Not bad…
On a recent visit to Ithaca, we had our dog in tow so we did takeout for dinner a few times. We decided to give Sticky Rice a try and ordered the papaya salad with purple rice and the chicken in banana leaf with white rice.
We went to pick up our order and I have to say, I would never eat in here. The place is kind of grimy, had a weird sour and dirty grease smell, and there was a giant cricket sitting on the window.
However, the food was pretty good. We loved the sticky rice. The papaya salad wasn’t anything to write home about, but it was pretty fresh and added a much needed crunch to the meal. The chicken in the banana leaf was a hit. The creamy coconut milk and spices were delicious and the chicken was tender.
Overall, this place isn’t at the top of my list, but the food might warrant a visit here and there.

Nope. No fresh veggies despite what’s stated on the menu, rice vermicelli totally over-cooked…just terrible. As other reviews show this place is spotty at best in its quality. And the location is terrible… you can’t get out of the parking lot to save your life. There really is NO consistently decent Thai in this town, despite what you might think.

Great food. Can be pricey depending on what you order. A must try

Perhaps if you are a student with a severe case of munchies, you might not notice unclean tabletops, indifferent service and food poor quality of which is concealed by excessive spice. After specifically asking for mild curry, we were served a dish so hot that was unedible ever over rice. We had to send it back, the waitress gave us attitude over it, and then we were charged for the dish we had to return! We were not even offered a replacement, or any sort of compensation. I love Thai food and eat it regularly in NYC — this was the worst I’ve ever had. I don’t know, perhaps by Laotian standards it’s ok. Other dishes (grilled shrimp and a Thai sausage dish) were more or less adequate but far from worth the price. Overall, it seems all the positive reviews are from either owner’s buddies or from people who never had decent Thai.

Ordered take-​out. This place is probably good in person, but they forgot the servings of rice for both entrees, servings of the mildly expensive entrees were small, service was late, food was cold. Would not order again.

After leaving Ithaca for years, I have finally realized that this tiny place offers the best Thai food I have ever had. Even for people with a spicy tongue like me, their drunken noodles will set you on fire (sometimes). I have also ordered other dishes. I don’t remember any one that is bad. The Thai tea and desserts are good too.
One drawback is that the flavor has some variation. The other one is that it has limited hours.

Service was terrible and the food was okay. Ice machine broke and they couldn’t even go get a bag of ice. No attention to refill water or check in on us after we received the food. Maybe we ordered the wrong items but it was just average food complimented by terrible service.

Hole-​in-​the-​wall with cafeteria tables and great food. I got the #21 (can’t remember name) chicken and hard-​boiled egg in curry, with purple sticky rice. The rice is served in a little bamboo basket with cover to keep it warm. It was delicious. Wish I was with friends because I wanted to get the sticky rice with mango for dessert, but it would be too much food. Next time!

Best Thai food in Ithaca. Loved their purple sticky rice (really hard to find even among Thai restaurants), drunken noodles, pad thai, and various stir fries.
Warning: «hot» = very spicy at this place. My GF’s from Sichuan (a place known for its spicy dishes) and she still thinks that their dishes (hot) can be too spicy at times.

For a place that’s a total whole-​in-​the-​wall restaurant, this place gets a lot of business. It’s on the backside of a building where it is not visible from the street, and you would only find it by following signs which aren’t really prominent enough to draw your attention. The interior may seem a bit janky but that’s what you kinda expect with places like this.
It’s a pretty small place so I wouldn’t recommend it for big groups. We had a party of eight and they were unable to seat us together because there was already another group using the big table, so we had to split into two tables on opposite sides of the restaurant.
Upon sitting down, the waitress told us that it would take at least 20 – 25 minutes to get our food. Probably not something you would want to be told within your first few minutes inside the restaurant but we decided to stay anyway. Lots of people ordered on the phone and picked them up instead so that might be a better option.
Thai iced tea is HUGE here. They basically give you a giant glass mug meant for beers. They’re so tall that the straws they give you will be completely submerged. It’s only $ 3 so it’s a great deal compared to other places.
Every dish is in the range of $ 10 to $ 14. Common dishes like pad thai and pad se-​ew were in that range too so don’t expect them to be any cheaper than the «fancier» dishes. I ordered something from the barbecue page and I was told 20 minutes later that my dish was not available and I would need to pick something else. I just asked for the same thing as one of my friends. Surprisingly it came out almost immediately after that so perhaps their kitchen sped up. It still would have been better if they were more aware of what was available from their menu so I didn’t have to be told my dish was unavailable 20 minutes later.
The food itself was pretty good but the size doesn’t justify the cost, except for the iced tea. Service was friendly but they should have been more efficient.

My parents love this place.
I ordered the Curry Puffs, the Cassia Leaf, and the Khoawniew Somtum because I had no idea what they were and I like to try new things.
The Curry Puffs are deep fried dumplings filled with curried vegetables, and come with a sweet chili dipping sauce. They were great and I can see why they are a favorite with lots of people.
The Cassia Leaf is a very runny green sauce that comes in a half pint container. The sauce contains bits of chopped cooked scallion, onion, and pork (you can choose the meat). It comes with rice so I poured it over the rice before I ate it. I ordered it mild and found it savory and tasty. But I can see how it would be good with a bit more heat as well. I liked this and would recommend it. Particularly for people who don’t like spicy food. I ordered it with the Jasmine rice but I think the purple or white sticky rice is a better match to the flavor.
The Khoawniew Somtum is a cold shredded papaya and carrot salad with fresh tomatoes, and a sweet fish sauce served on a bed of lettuce, it’s sort of like a vinegar coleslaw. I ordered it mild but it usually contains fresh chilies. It comes with grilled chicken or pork. I ordered the pork. I’m not very fond of fish sauce so this wasn’t to my taste and I probably won’t order it again. I don’t think this traveled very well for take out. I think it would be better for eating in. But my friend liked it. The grilled pork chop was fine. I liked it.

I like spicy food. I thought Ithaca had no spicy food that could actually harm me. I was so very wrong.
My girlfriend and I went to Sticky Rice once on a whim, off the basis it was the first result for stir fry on Unilocal in Ithaca. Went inside, the atmosphere was reasonably pleasant. Looking at the menu the Stir Fry with Thai Basil looked delicious. I ordered it, asked them to make it as spicy as they could. The waitress looked at me, asked me to confirm my insanity, then went to the kitchen with I can only imagine a devilish grin on her face. When the food came, within two bites my tastebuds had been melted off. I probably went through 3 – 4 pitchers of water on my own.
For the record, the above anecdote is a positive. It was TERRIFIC food, and I received exactly what I ordered. I’ve been to Sticky Rice probably ten or eleven times since then, and each time it is better and better. When people from out of town ask where to eat, this is what I recommend. Please go to Sticky Rice.

At one time this was my favorite Thai restaurant in Ithaca, but I feel like ever since they remodeled the quality has gone down hill. They have a lot of unique dishes that the other Thai places don’t do, and the purple sticky rice is still fantastic as usual. Chili heads be warned that if you order things super spicy here, it will come out extremely hot. Start by ordering spicy (already hotter than 99% of Ithacans can handle) and if that doesn’t suffice they will go as hot as you want. This place is still slightly tastier than Taste of Thai or Taste of Thai Express, although no longer enough so that it warrants an extra star.

Th place could have been a bit cleaner but the food was very good.
We had eaten an appetizer elsewhere so we only tried two entrees — one was basil fried rice — amazing flavor, tender, flavorful rice — somewhat small portion for the price and «medium hot» is quite hot.
The Loatian «Laab Moo» was not sauced enough and way, way, way too spicy for a medium designation. Had to ask for some sweet chile sauce to calm it down. It had good flavors once you tamed down the heat but a medium on this is really like an extra hot anywhere else so keep that in mind. The price for that was a bit steep as well but one could tell it was very authentic and compared to Thai Cuisine and the other Thai joint in town it is about the same value.
We sat next to the bathroom door which had tons of slimy fingerprints all over it. The bathroom itself needed some cleaning.