Siam Lotus Thai Cuisine

We have tried more than 10 Thai Food restaurants in the city and NONE have come close to Siam Lotus in terms of quality and flavor. We have also been to Thailand several times and experienced authentic Thai cuisine and Siam Lotus definitely delivers similar quality and flavor profiles in so many of their dishes.
The location in The Haight is a bit grungy, as per the usual for this location, and the physical space itself is average but the food combined with the hospitable service will inspire you to come back time and time again. The staff aims to please, and the owner/​chef will wow you with all of her dishes.
Some of our favorite items:
Larb Gai (Chicken Salad): amazing flavors and very fresh!
Penang Curry: great with any protein, this dish is rich in flavor and very tasty!
Street Pork (appetizer): grilled pork with immense flavor, some of the best I’ve had!
Pricing is reasonable and it’s easy to get a table. Give it a try!

If you are looking for bomb coconut pad thai, hit up this place. If you are looking for excellent mango sticky rice, do not hit up this place.
The coconut pad thai is amazing– I probably said «this is really good» five thousand times while eating it. However, the mango black sticky rice (a sweet dessert rice with mango on the side) is TINY and overpriced at $ 8!!!
I highly recommend this place for the coconut pad thai, but if you only want dessert, I would skip it here and find somewhere else (there’s a good crêpe place down the street btw).

I am between a 2.5 and a 3 .
Thai tea was pretty good. It was better than a lot of other places i have had and this is probably what contributed most to my rating .
Calamari was okay ~ just average but the sauce it came with was interesting and different however .
Mint salad with chicken tasted like it had fish sauce in it so if you arent a fan of that taste i would not recommend it. It tastes better than it smells and tastes better wrapped in the lettuce .
I also got asparagus drunken noodle spicy lvl 4. Overall it was not too spicy but it had chili in it that burned my tongue due to its spiciness ! It was not too flavorful otherwise .
Portions are pretty good and big but i dont think the food was that flavorful or anything special.

Really good Thai food! Haven’t had some truly good Thai in a long time, this place is authentic and actually makes it «Thai spicy» when you ask for it so be careful. Had the panang curry and it was delicious. Small place but does the job. Enjoy…

This teeters more towards a 3.5 star, but going off of what Unilocal gives me the options for.
A pretty quiet spot in the Haight area. Came here with a group of three and got seated immediately. We were craving Thai food all day so we immediately ordered a few appetizers to split and our own entrees
Calamari — ³⁄₅ decent and nothing too special. They had a sweet sticky dipping that had a nice little flavor kick to it
Minced chicken with mint salad — ⁴⁄₅ tasted fresh and had a fish sauce kick to it, I think. So if you’re not familiar with that flavor, be wary of this dish. Otherwise, it had a healthy flavor and was great wrapped up in the lettuce leaves.
Drunken noodles with asparagus — ³⁄₅ they ask you what level of spice you want (1 – 5), and I’m pretty tolerant of my spice so I got a 4 and it definitely had a nice kick to it to help clear up those sinuses, but aside from the spicy factor, there really wasn’t too much flavor with these noodles unfortunately :(had to ask for side sauces to douse the noodles in to get it more flavorful
Overall, it was an average experience with average service

Excellent fresh food. Sweet people too. Be careful about your heat level tolerance though. On a scale of 1 – 5, 3 was a bit too spicy for us.

Came for dinner and our food came out within around 10 minutes which was very nice because we were in a rush to go to a show (obviously not a good idea to sit in and dine when you’re on a time crunch but whatevs!). Good the coconut pad Thai and the half moon bay sugar pumpkin curry both with chicken. The coconut pad Thai was sweet from the coconut milk they put it in and the noodles aren’t the usual thin rice noodles but rather the wide kinds, an interesting surprise! It was good overall. The pumpkin curry had a good kick to it, just slight but yummy. Lots of pumpkin too! I’d come back :) they seem like really nice people too!

I just bought a tom gai kai soup at this place to go, worst Thai soup experience ever. $ 10.50 for a ²⁄₃ full round plastic soup container with 6 pieces of chicken and a few mushrooms, ridiculous rip off with all due respect. Several ingredients missing like snow peas etc. I’m doing a social media campaign against this place unless they fess up.

We had the chicken panang curry and the chicken pineapple fried rice. Both of them were amazing. Specially loved the latter. The place is very clean and the people who work here are super nice and friendly.

Decent Thai.
I ordered Tofu Pad Thai and my boyfriend had Chicken Pad See Ew. It was not bad, but nothing to get too excited about.
I ordered my Pad Thai spicy. The waitress repeatedly warned me that it would be extremely spicy, and wouldn’t let me order it too spicy. I should’ve stuck to what I know (I eat thai frequently AND I’ve been to Thailand). I ended up adding more hot sauce to it. However… she did let my boyfriend order his dish spicy. It was indeed spicy & sweat inducing. (Clearly, a little bitter about that.)
The restaurant had one, maybe 2, other couples in it and the service was slow. It took a while for someone to take our order and the food came out slowly. I don’t know how they would handle a full house.
Overall, decent. Not itching to go back.

The crab rice is amazing! I love how the crab does not overpower the rice and how the jalapeño adds a bit of a kick. I also had the level 2 spicy pad Thai. It was good but not spicy. I’ll probably go for a level 4 or 5 next time. The service was great. Can’t wait to go back!

Ate here last night (Saturday); I think they may have been unusually busy so the hour-​long wait from being seated to being served may be abnormal. But there can’t be any excuses for that coconut pad thai! It’s one of the most disappointing things I’ve ever eaten at a thai place; just boiled large flat rice noodles and a bland curry sauce (ordered medium spicy) with a handful of bean sprouts. Maybe it would have been less disappointing if it was just labeled curried noodles, but I was expecting something like pad thai. Not stir fried, no peanuts, no egg, hardly any flavor or texture, and I was ravenous after the hour long wait, so it probably tasted worse than I experienced it! My husband ordered mango chicken or something like that and it was much better than the coconut «pad thai», so maybe just don’t order what I did.

Eh — don’t eat here. It’s not terrible and you won’t want to walk right out — but an order of Pork Prik Khing just tasted like fish sauce. It was edible and it wasn’t bad — the ingredients were good quality — but it certainly wasn’t an interesting or developed flavor. Save your money and time and go across the street to Ploy II — much nicer ambiance, better prices and MUCH better flavor.

My second time eating here! Recommended by a local crystal shop owner.
Service and food are always great. :)

Service was very slow, they ran out of flat noodles and chicken wings and Food was very salty or so bland. Clearly, their was no balance of flavor unfortunately. This restaurant is a very Americanized Thai restaurant and is definitely not authentic! My family and I ordered the pad Thai, basil chicken, duck fried rice and spicy eggplant with fried tofu. The pad Thai wasn’t even orange In color and it lack that depth of flavor other Thai restaurants have. Originally we ordered their chicken wings, but they came back 20 minutes later saying they ran out so instead we ordered their Basil chicken. BIG MISTAKE! The chicken was too salty that it was almost unpalatable. The spicy egg plant with fried tofu was a huge disappointment, Panda Express version of eggplant and tofu taste so much better!!! There again lack depth of flavor and spicy. And the eggplant looked like it was boiled rather than stir fried. The only dish that was mediocre at best was their duck fried rice. They had ample amount of duck in their fried rice. However way too much 5spice!

During our family vacation to San Francisco, we found this place using the «Around Me» iPhone app when we were walking Haight Street on Wed. August 5, 2015. In fact, it caught my eye because I though they might be related to Lotus of Siam in Las Vegas where I’ve dined before. Turns out, it is not related — but who cares? This was a wonderful Thai dinner!
I started with the Hot & Sour Soup and ordered it extra spicy. They repeatedly warned me that it would be extremely spicy, but I paid no heed and said «bring it on anyway!» Actually, they were right — it was delicious, albeit extremely spicy as they warned… I ate it all anyway, and my sinuses were completely cleared :-)
Next was the Crab Fried Rice. Just awesome. Fresh and fluffy… it felt very healthy.
My wife hadn’t had Thai food before, so she ordered the Chicken Curry Butternut Squash since it sounded simple and familiar. She totally loved it.
The service was excellent too. Two ladies served us, one of which was «Nart» the owner. Both ladies were extremely nice and attentive. We were there early in the evening, so it hadn’t gotten crowed yet, so I don’t know if we would have gotten the same attentiveness if they were really busy.
All said, this was a marvelous dinner — we’d go back again in a heartbeat next time we’re in San Fran!

I came to eat here with my boyfriend and a friend. It was still early for dinner, but we decided to eat anyway. I ordered a Thai iced coffee and the pad-​see-​ew. Upon ordering, they advised that they ran out of the thicker noodles. That was a huge disappointment. Especially since it was still early for dinner. So, they offered to use the thinner noodles. I said ok, because I was really craving for the flavor of the pad see ew.
The Thai coffee was filled to the top and seemed a lot stronger than most Thai places. I had to request more milk or half and half.
I guess the thicker noodles make a difference in the dish? The dish was lacking that nice stir fry flavor. I don’t know if it’s because the thinner noodles are more moist when cooking? Either way, the dish was a bit bland for my taste and it made me regret agreeing to substitute the thicker noodles. I should have just ordered something else.
I’m not normally in the Haight area, but I think I’ll give another restaurant a chance instead of coming back.
Service was good, although when one of the ladies brought us plates, one of the plate had some rice residue stuck in the center. I guess they don’t check the plates to make sure it’s really clean after they wash it?

They surprised me every time I came here, either for lunch or dinner.
Environment: It’s clean, not so loud. For sure you would see a lot interesting people on the Haight.
Service: friendly and lovely. Most of time there are 2 people serving, so the service is quite slow during peek hours, but absolutely not lousy at all.
Food: amazing! I have difficult time to decide what I want to order here because everything is so good, like home cook. Some spectacular dishes I have tried:
— Northern Curry Egg Noodle (Kao Soi)
— Coconut Pad Thai: it’s not regular pad thai, it’s more than that, with very great curry sauce
— Grilled Beef Salad
— Panang Curry
— Green Bean Prik King
I will come back, surely!

Thai food rarely wows me, and I rarely crave it. When I do, I usually stick with my go-​to pad thai or potato curry. Went with the latter this time, and it was very creamy (full of coconut milk, I’m sure). The soup that we shared was also very creamy, and even though coconut milk isn’t dairy, it still turns my stomach the wrong way. So I had a bit of a tummy ache that night :(But food was pretty good — just nothing special.

Beware. They overcharged my credit card. While I can’t prove it was intentional, as you’ll see below, it sure looks that way.
I ordered takeout. State law says cooks don’t share in tips; it was the cooks who did all the work on my order (not the servers), so I usually leave no tip or just a little one in this situation.
So I added a $ 1.16 tip on the $ 22.34 order. As you’ll see in my photo (a scan of the credit card bill and the receipt the restaurant sent the credit card company), they entered this $ 1.16 tip as $ 4.00. How can that have been a typo or an entry error? Those two sets of numbers are nowhere near each other on the keypad.
The dollar amount here is small. But it’s the principle. And if they did this to me, to how many other customers have they done this as well?
[Update: one of the owners emailed me, apologized profusely, and offered this explanation: «We line our credit card bills by number order and yours was most likely misplaced within the pile. Therefore a different order’s tip was added to your bill.» You be the judge, but it’s always good practice to double check those credit card bills].