Pure Thai Cookhouse

I work around here and my coworkers have been bugging me to go here. I finally went and I’m so happy I didn’t wait another day to miss out on this awesome food.
Heads up: Hour wait on a weekend night
Totally worth the wait !! Once you smell what they’re cooking, there’s no chance in leaving
Lets cut to the chase– food… Authentic and not too spicy
Beef Buns: Comes w three. Soft, warm, my recommended appetizer
Curry Puffs: Good but if I were to go again, I’d go w the beef buns
For the entrees, we shared the Ratchaburi Crab, Pad Kee Moa with Calamari, and the Duck noodle soup. All were amazing and had very distinct flavors. My favorite was the Ratchaburi which was sweet and savory. Drooling just thinking about it
Topped off the meal with the pumpkin dessert. At first we were disappointed that they didn’t have the classic mango sticky rice, but after having the pumpkin version, we were tempted to get a second one!
This is my absolute fav thai place in the city.

BOMB! Best Thai food in NYC! Small as hell but that’s usually the case when the food is great. If ambiance/​atmosphere is your thing, u won’t find it here, however what they lack in space & décor they definitely make up for it with the food. We were seated right away when we arrived (6 ish on a Wednesday). Food arrived quickly. I had the Wok chili shrimp (I think that’s what it was called) it was phenomenal! Very tasty. I got it medium spicy which had the right amount of kick for me. Also had the Thai iced tea — beware it’s really sweet but good. I definitely recommend this place to anyone looking for great inexpensive Thai food.

Very COZY spot to grab some great Thai noodles. ((cozy code for TIGHT AF — welcome to NYC))
Delicious yet affordable. Employees are a complete delight.
Host takes your name and calls you once a table is ready. Great system! ((I went to a nearby bar for a vodka rocks while I waited)) Which didn’t make me mind the 45 minute wait — which was a very accurate estimate.
Great selection of food choices as well as drinks. They serve wine, beer, and sake. Many appetizers to choose from.
Definitely recommended !

What a great little place! Came on a Thursday night around 5:15 and was seated immediately. The restaurant is very small, so I recommend coming at a non-​peak time. Additionally, the lack of space means you will likely be at a table that is inches from another table. So if you cherish privacy during your meal, you may be disappointed. But it’s a cool-​looking place with a sort of wood and sheet metal aesthetic and I liked the atmosphere as a whole.
To drink, I ordered the Thai iced tea. If you’ve had Thai iced tea before, then you know what this one tastes like, but bear in mind that this one is on the sweeter end of the spectrum. To eat, I got the Ratchaburi crab and pork dry noodles. This dish was really delicious! The bowl contains homemade egg noodles, pork, crab, yu choy (green vegetable) and a couple tiny jalapeño slices, which were a nice surprise. The noodles have a somewhat sweet sauce on them that brings the flavors together well, making the dish more than the sum of its parts.
Service was attentive and polite. I think the coziness of the restaurant makes it easier for the servers to tend to your needs. It’s a decent value overall, with most dishes between $ 10 – 20 and healthy portion sizes. I know I left feeling full and satisfied. Would like to go back at some point to try another noodle dish and maybe some dessert sticky rice!

Chef David Bank has created something very special here. The food is fantastic and the ingredients are of the highest quality I’ve ever seen at any Thai restaurants in NYC. The atmosphere is fun and lively. All the noodles are delicious and exactly how I’d want them to be. The flavors are distinctively bold with peppers, fish sauce, strong lime, and herbs.
Pure Thai Cookhouse is not exactly a secret, everyone in the neighborhood knows and loves this place. So my advice is to get there early to avoid excessive wait time.
And if you are reading this and still trying to decide between PTC and another restaurant, then congratulations, the pondering is over. Go here. Because you won’t be disappointed.

Amazing amazing amazing food!
We got the vegetable dumplings and the chicken curry pastry. Then we got this beef soup with handmade noodles and the shrimp pad Thai. And finished everything with the pumpkin custard, which my mother called «heavenly.»
Service was good too!

One of the best, if not THE BEST, Thai places in NY!
Just thinking of this place is already making my mouth water and crave their yummy dishes… But this place is phenomenal! With the first step in, the interior design is adorable and very homey, as you are welcomed with great smells of the overall restaurant! The place is a little cramped (it’s always so crowded), but there’s a great little waiting area both inside and outside of the restaurant. I’ve never actually ate in the restaurant, but the take-​out and delivery is just as good! In fact, their delivery is GREAT! It comes within 30 minutes, piping hot! Highly recommend!
I have ordered the traditional Pad Thai, Ratchaburi Crab & Pork Dry Noodles, Chicken Satay, and Chicken Curry Puffs. All of them have been absolutely wonderful! The pad thai is not too sweet and well-​cooked. I love their peanut sauce! The Ratchaburi Crab and Pork Dry Noodles is my favorite and a popular hidden dish! It’s full of SO much amazing flavor, and the pork is well marinated. The noodles are very chewy and are similar to ramen noodles-​a great texture with the meat! The chicken satay comes with an amazing peanut side sauce! It is my must-​get every single time, and I highly recommend! And lastly, the chicken curry puffs DO NOT disappoint. They are well-​sized, and the cucumber dipping sauce it comes with is amazingly refreshing. I cannot wait to try more of their dishes!
Pricing is great here, and with $ 15, you can have a full solid meal! A yummy deal that’s pretty sweet for Midtown Manhattan! Service is super friendly here! My only drawback would be the amount of people here and the wait to sit down in the actual restaurant. If you don’t mind waiting, be my guest! But for me, I’ll stick with my pick-​up order or delivery, for a lazy dine-​in at home with my Netflix.

With the slew of Thai restaurants popping up in NYC and 10 within a mile of Pure, Pure Thai Cookhouse is one you need to check out.
No frills. Small place. Rustic setting. Kitchen in the middle. Fresh Thai aroma wafting through the joint. Only makes the wait (which was short –15min on MLK Monday) that much more enticing. All the types noodles are homemade.
The Ratchaburi crab and pork are bomb. Not too spicy, a bit sweet and even, but if you want a kick be sure to ask for their pepper rack.
I also like the duck broth soup, very rich. Meat super tender. And the Greens almost make me think I’m eating healthy.
In other words, a Thai Cookhouse with a unique menu that needs to be on your list to visit.

Called ahead and ordered the Pad Thai for takeout during my lunch break. The food was prepared quickly and was hot and delicious when I got back to my desk to eat.
I would like to come back here to eat in, but it looks like the restaurant is very small and gets packed.

This place is the real deal. Tasty, authentic Thai food, not that mass produced crap you get at other places.
Plus it’s a great value. I ordered chicken pad Thai and it was only $ 11.
As others have said, it’s a whole in the wall place. I saw the sign for the restaurant but couldn’t figure out how to get in because the door is on a weird angle and you wont notice it. I got there around 6pm on a sunday and had to wait 10 minutes for a single seat at the «bar» in the back. By 6:15pm the line was literally out the door… people waiting outside in the snow!
That tells you how great a place this is.
Do it. Your stomach and taste buds will thank you

**Warning: Fish sauce is a vital element to most Southeast Asian dishes. Fish sauce is the holy cook of this region in Asia. So if you have conceived an aversion to fish sauce SMELL in the recent past, please don’t even show up and don’t drop a bad review.**
If there was a beauty pageant for food around the world, Green Papaya Salad and Fried Rice with Crab Meat would be my choice of Thai representatives from Pure Thai. They are popular, simple, and easy to get along. I would introduce them to dining rookies.
If you know Thai food, you may find that the flavors here are NOT as sweet, creamy, and SPICY as you expect. But I would rate Pure as VERY AUTHENTIC. This is because Pure specializes in dishes from Phayao, which is a region in Northern Thailand. Because the climate in the North is rather cool and mountainous, Northern cuisine is not as strong as other signature food from the rest of Thailand. This weakness is, however, why Northern food is much easier to eat for non-​Thai people.
Pure Thai also serves house-​made egg noodles /​thin rice noodles /​flat rice noodles /​vermicelli. Dry or soup noodles depend on you. Who says Asian don’t know their pastas?
P/​S: The only cons is no reservation and very long wait for dinner. Expect at least 30 min — an hour.

The menu feels very much like Thai street food culture, which really is the best kind. Came here during weekday lunch, and it gets crowded fast! Mix of the office lunch crowd and tourists. Definitely one of the best Thai places in the city.

I work in Midtown and I am always there off work hours because I go to broadway shows all the time… And let me tell you it is NOT easy find a solid place to eat with GOOD AUTHENTIC food in that area. It’s highly commercial in the core of Times Square and if anyone tries to tell me that Restaurant Rowe is great for finding places YOU’RE SO WRONG! I can’t stand Restaurant Rowe.
With all that being said… I WAS SO HAPPY TO FIND PURE THAI COOKHOUSE!!! This place is CRAMPEDDDDDDD so if you’re not willing to sacrifice a little personal space for this awesome food — don’t go here: D.
We sat at this tiny tiny bar that they have set up in the back. The food was so good I didn’t even care about how cramped it was. Our dishes even came out a little late and I still didn’t even care! They made up for the late dishes with two amazing free glasses of thai iced tea (you need to get one) and a free order of spring rolls.
I will definitely be back again soon :).

This place is literally a hole in the wall. We had to search hard to find this place. There is a very small door and the inside is even smaller than expected. There is a bit of a wait, but you can order ahead of time while you are waiting, which is good since you can get your food quickly after getting a seat. We ordered the crab & pork dry noodles (which is the most recommended on Unilocal) and the beef noodle soup. Both were really good, and I personally really enjoyed the experience because I hadn’t tried anything like these dishes at other Thai places. We also ordered the curry puffs, which were incredibly fresh and yummy.
The crab & pork dry noodles were definitely better than what I expected from a dry noodle. The base of the bowl is mixed with fish sauce, and it came with a bowl of what I think is ox bone noodle soup, which was neither salty nor too oily, so it complemented the plate well. The noodles were sweet and chewy and the pork and crab went well with the noodles. The beef noodle soup was also really good. The soup was not too salty and incredibly flavorful. The different types of beef in the soup were also really tender and chewy.
Overall, I would give this place a 5 for food. We had a little awkward moment with an overbearing waitress, which was incredibly uncomfortable, which is why I am giving this place only 4 stars.

We got here on New Year Eve’s around 5 PM and it’s already pretty crowded but we got a table for 3 right away. We sat in the back of the restaurant, sharing a table with another party of 3. The place had Thai music playing which sounds pretty interesting at time. We ordered the chicken wings and the Ratchaburi crab and pork dry noodles and a Thai iced tea to share.
Chicken wings — 3 stars — crispy but not very flavorful in itself. You really need to dip with the sauce that comes with it to get to a good combination.
Ratchaburi crab and pork dry noodles — 3.5 stars — The pork is like char siu and noodles are sweet and sour and quite tasty. There was not a lot of crab meat in the bowl.
Thai iced tea is about the same taste with any other Thai place, nothing too special.

Small and mighty.
I’m frequently skeptical of eating in Midtown, especially places with high star counts that I often assume are given from tourists. Thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised.
In the evening, this tiny place gets packed, and for good reason. We were quoted a 45-​min wait and were seated in 15. Hallelujah!
The small bites are definitely the stars of the menu– peanutty vegetarian dumplings; tender, sweet, and fresh beef buns with crispy cucumber; delicate fried puffs, delicious crispy salads. However, skip the chicken satay– it’s average. I’m a fan of the shrimp with cashews (I usually get it with chicken) or any of the curries, if I’m willing to melt my face off with spice (which I usually am). This place is IT. I do appreciate the somewhat non traditional Thai menu (no green or massaman curries here), but of course, you still can get a pad Thai if you’re in the mood.
The service is surprisingly cheerful, given that if I had to serve food and move in this packed wannabe walk-​in-​closet for 8 hours a day, I’d totally go postal… which makes the smiles and conversations all the more impressive and wonderful. Coat hooks and purse hooks underneath the «bar» area are truly appreciated. Bathroom is cute and smells good. What’s not to like?

SO DELICIOUS! Let’s get right down to business…
1.) CHICKEN CURRY PUFFS ($ 8)
There are four pieces, so each thing is $ 2…a bit expensive, but it was bomb. Probably not worth the price, but it was definitely worth a try at least once.
2.) PAD KEE MAO WITH CALAMARI ($ 12)
I’m usually a fan of pad kee mao – it’s hard to make it wrong. But there’s something about the pad kee mao here that makes it stand out in my mind. The flavor is elevated. And the calamari was cooked beautifully. I can’t pinpoint what made this dish so outstanding, but it just was. Props to the chef!
3.) RATCHABURI CRAB AND PORK DRY NOODLES ($ 13)
I’m not very familiar with this dish so I can’t really critique it – but it was also fantastic. I just wish there was a bit more crab.
4.) THAI ICED TEA ($ 4)
They make it in-​house – always a good sign. Enough said.
Overall, excellent food.
Great décor. I appreciate all the hooks throughout the restaurant for big coats.
The service is generally excellent. However, this restaurant can get very busy and when they need your table after you’re done eating, they will passively aggressively try to shoo you out.

Wandering around the neighborhood and popped in here for a late lunch by recommendation of my cousin who used to live in the area! The first thing I noticed was it was a tiny place with beautiful dishes, all mismatched but very pretty. Definitely a bit of a hole-​in-​the-​wall place but bustling at 2pm for lunch so that’s a good sign!
As a party of one I was seated at the little bar in the front of the store which was nice and cozy, just what I was looking for. They have a unique drink menu, and their food menu is medium size but with lots of variations for each dish. For example, their pad thai is made with shrimp but you can substitute chicken, beef, tofu, etc. to almost any dish on the menu. I was craving a good pad thai and this little spot looked like it was a great place for it — I was right! Delicious, authentic classic pad thai which I got with chicken. Large portion sizes too, plenty for leftovers.
I will definitely be back for some belly-​warming thai, and you can order online and through their app as well!

The food is really good here! The service is quick as well. We were seated at a small table (for 4 people) near the back. On the walls are hooks to hang your coats/​jackets and purses since the seats have no backs to them. There is also a chalkboard menu on the back wall that offers various specials that aren’t listed on the menu.
We ordered:
— Green Papaya Salad ($ 9):
— Fried Rice With Lump Crab Meat ($ 13): This was sooo good! We shared this amongst 3 people. It was a good size.
— Ratchaburi Crab & Pork Dry Noodles ($ 13): My bro thoroughly enjoyed this dish. He ordered this twice on two different occasions and both times he CLEANED the bowl. Nothing was left. It was that good to him! lol
Overall, this place is cozy and warm. The staff is great and they work quickly. Give this place a try

Friday lunch with workmates. My choice. I care. Phone ahead. No reservations. Opens at noon.
Arrive at 12:05 and there is a near full house but we are tabled. Check with fellow diners on preferences. Peanut allergist in tow. Order BABY BACK RIBS and spring roll (in lieu of Chicken Satay). Mains are PAED KEE MOA, Wok Basil with Chicken and (player to be named later). Things to know:
Baby Back Ribs, Paed Kee Moa are your mistake to not order. Especially the ribs.
The servers will ask about your preference for spice. I opted for medium but wished I had ordered HOT. My comparison here is three blocks away and their standard is probably equal to hot at Pure Thai. The food temperature is served fresh off the fire.
SERVICE is rapid fire, youthful native Thai. They aren’t going to shmooze you they’re going to bring you food and drinks as quick as they can.
Décor is painted brick with modestly rustic wood. My guess is that this was a small tavern back in the day. Music is boppy southeast Asian. Liked it.
Overall, a great first time. Next time, I’ll arrive 11:55 for lunch. There was a five table wait when we left.

Bonne adresse à 2 pas du Novotel où tout est cuisiné minute pour un prix très raisonnable.

Un restaurant thailandais absolument fabuleux
tester le pad thai aux crevettes pour 11 $ et en entrée le chicken curry puffs absolument délicieux.
il n’y a pas de réservation et en peu d’attente mais ce restaurant en vaut le coup !
Pas très loin de Times Square, sur la neuvième.
Un restaurant à recommander à tout les amtateurs de nourritures Thai.

Kleines hübsches Thairestaurant. Großartiges Essen. Das ganze Restaurant bis hin zu Toilette ist mit viel Detailliebe gestaltet. Sehr scharf bestellt kriegt scharf.

Un bon rendez-​vous pour les amateurs de la vrai cuisine thaïlandaise. De belles assiettes avec beaucoup de goût et d’amertume. De bonne sauce et un ambiance new yorkaise. Un lieu convivial et sympathique.