Busaba Eathai Hoxton

The food here is amazing! There’s usually a queue to be seated, but that’s because it’s so popular and the queue moves fast. I’m not so keen on the smell, it’s a bit «wet dog», but my friend didn’t seem to notice. I love that the menu isn’t over complicated, the food arrives quickly, the servings are generous and it’s delicious!

It’s fine, but there’s better.
We’ve gotten takeaway from this Busaba a couple times, and it’s varied a little. The service has been very efficient, even in the face of an online ordering snafu from DineIn, so that’s a plus. But the food is just not amazing.
Admittedly, we’ve only had pad thai, pad seiuw, panang curry, and tom yum from these guys, but none of those dishes would score above a 6 out of 10 on my scale. The last time, our pad thais were very bland and the chicken was chewy — probably closer to a 4 than a 6. I’ll be sticking to Thai Thai up the street despite their weird and erratic discounts and occasional breakdowns in service, because their curries and soups are just much better. Still looking for a good Thai noodle place.

Did someone say unlimited Prosecco?! Yes please! You dont have to tell me twice so we visited Busaba Eathai for their Saturday bottemless lunch deal. We were seated on the heated outdoor terrace, décor both inside and out is well designed and carry’s the thai feeling/​design throughout. Beautiful exposed wood tables. Our service was quick — we had ordered both starters and mains and had out glasses filled with the good stuff within 5 minutes. My only gripe would be all our dishes arrived at the same time — with a table for 2 4 dishes made for tricky logistics! That said everything that was crammed onto our table was delicious. Highlights of Goong Tohd (crispy prawns), Thai Calamari was soft and cooked to perfection with just the right tingle of chilli. Main event of a crispy chicken roti was also pleasant (though we are on the 3^rd glass of bubbles by now so my memory is a little ‘fizzy!) Once we have scraped our plates cleaned we were not shooed off — infact the opposite. We were allowed to sit, chat and have out glasses topped up until the end of our 2 hour sitting. Talk about great value. I am already looking forward to going back!

Very chilled place, cool, relaxed vibe as soon as you enter the restaurant due to the incense burning. Currently celebrating 15 years so there’s a special menu out featuring dishes from different regions of Thailand. I always love the fried rice there — go for the crab or the prawn chilli options. Nice place for a cheap eat. Choose the communal tables too — more atmosphere!

Delicious menu, bottomless prosecco (2 hour max sitting) and great (ish) service. The food was fresh and extremely tasty, try the calamari for a starter and the massaman curry roti with sweet potato fries for a main. Our server was lovely and catered to our needs. However her manager took over our table as she has to go on a break and she was less accommodating. Felt like we were being naughty school kids and were told off for being given an extra glass of prosecco! Aside from her unnecessarily authoritative demeanour overall experience was great!

So let us suppose that you work around Liverpool Street. On a sunny Friday, you decide to explore the area around Shoreditch with your mates to find a place to have lunch.
You start at 11:45 and get in a quiet restaurant, so calm and peaceful that you thought you were at a Buddhist temple. But then, by 13:00, the temple turned into a party zone. The place got so full that we had to wait 20 minutes to get our bill. We even cancelled our second order of lemonade as we were tired of waiting.
I must say they are probably understaffed at busy times.
Apart from that, the food was decent. I will definitely give them a better rating once they decide to hire enough waiters to serve the number of people that come in at lunch time.

Trés bon restaurant asiatique, je né pourrais vous dire si on peut le qualifier de thai proprement dit, cependant mon canard au basilic était vraiment divin, le riz gluant parfait, petit bémol je pense que c’est une chaine, il y a beaucoup beaucoup de monde, c est fort bruyant et le prix assez cher mais bon je me suis régalé et l’accueil au top!

Really friendly staff and amazing deals. We were always checked on to make sure our meal was going well. With our deals a £100 meal only came to £35!!! AMAZING!

This Busaba has well trained staff which pay attention to their customer and offer genuine Thai food.
They serve quite fast and always keep me informed which I called good services. The food are also tasty and pimping hot. Will definitely come again.

I’ve only had takeaway from here so cannot comment on the atmosphere etc. As for the food, it’s fine but I don’t think it’s Thai. My favorite Thai dish, tom kha gai, was warm and coconutty but not spicy at all and overly greasy. One of my favorite things about Thai food is all of the flavor without the feeling of being weighed down, and this was the opposite of that. I also had a green papaya salad, another one of my favorites, but again this lacked flavor. If you are looking for kind of watered down Thai adjusted for a western palate, I’d go here, but not for anything close to authentic. (I’m not Thai but lived in Southeast Asia for a couple of years and have been to Thailand a few times, so not an expert by any means but have had some Thai meals that were stupid delicious.)

I came to the Busaba Hoxton location today for their 50% off food throughout the whole of January promotion. I’m usually not the one to complain when getting a discount, however, the customer experience was not pleasent and thought I’d let our fellow Unilocalers know — especially when taking advantage of the half off offer.
Firstly the offer — I found out through Unilocal,the Busaba website and on Timeout here:
. The Busaba website specifically states «Pay with the Busaba app in January 2015 when dining in to receive 50% off your food bill.» and Timeout specifically states «All you need to do is download the Busaba Eathai app and present the discount code when ordering.»
I was going to dinner with two others and thought cool, let’s go to Busaba and take advantage of the half off deal. We got there early to beat the queue and ate. When we sat down I told the waiter we’re here for the 50% deal and he said no problem, jut download the app. Cool… Service was slow but not terrible. Food was OK. I got the pad thai and it was greasy.
I then downloaded the Busaba app to get ready to pay the bill. I downloaded the app just fine but when I launched it, the app wanted all this personal details including Name, email and most importantly credit card or paypal details. Really annoying as I don’t like giving this info unnecessarily but for the 50% discount, I guess I’ll give it.
When we got the bill it was full priced so I flagged down our waiter and he asked to see the app. I showed him the app but he wanted a code from it. I then showed him the code. He then said I needed to pay via the app — I thought fine, this is part of the 50% deal. On the app itself, you can split the bill — so we did — I paid my third via paypal. My two other friends were ready to pay with their physical credit cards however they were not allowed to pay via credit cards — we had to pay via the app! I guess that’s what the deal said up front @Pay with the Busaba app” but it did not say «All parties needs to have the Busaba app downloaded and linked to a credit card/​paypal account». Anyway, it was too much of a faff for my friends to download the app and go through the registration process so I just ended up paying their share of the bill.
What if my friends didn’t want to share their personal info with Busaba but I did already? What if they didn’t have a smart phone to download the app? The offer is not specific enough to state that ALL parties need to pay via the Busaba app.
It wasn’t even that much money to save — we could have lived without the faff. Or next time, just not gone to Busaba as it was just too much overhead to get the discount. Really left a bad taste in my mouth leaving the restaurant!

I love this Busaba in old st. they are very efficient there and well the food is always good, I just think some plates are a little bit price for what they offer but the calamari is amazing!
I always go of some chicken satay and coconut rice if you want you can fill up with some Chinese broccoli and voilá!

Upon first visit to any Thai place, I go with the Pad Thai — if you impress with that dish, it’s mostly a good sign that everything else will be great. Needless to say, the Sen Chan Pad Thai impressed me — shrimp («prawn» for you English folks) and crab meat (didn’t seem like imitation crab) were cooked nicely and blended well with everything else in the dish. Service was OK, nothing impressive. Will go back soon to try something different.

Solid choice but would prefer it if the price/​portion ratio was slightly closer. Always leaves me feeling a little less than totally full.

Expect good food, but a bad dining experience.
I have tried this place twice several years apart, and let me say that the food is great. I would be close to four stars for the food, but the atmosphere is horrible when the place is full. The room is nicely decorated and the fact that you sit on benches around tables with other people is not a poblem as such, but the tables are so close to each other that the waiters and other guests keep bumping into you while you are sitting in your seat. On top of that, the noice level is extremely high. If you are more than three people it will be almost impossible to have a normal conversation.

Went here for a friend’s birthday. Great choice of food on the menu. I must say, it is rather daunting to go there by yourself if you’ve never been before as the menu doesn’t give much off by way of help.
I had the Tom kha chicken as my main dish. But their side dishes are perfect. They offer a great variety of dishes, which all have their very own distinct flavour. I cannot get enough of the Thai Calamari and the Chicken Satay. Those dishes are a must have when you go.
The only bad thing about this place is the fact that they don’t take reservations. It is very annoying having to line up outside waiting for a table, especially during the dinner service. But it is definitely worth the wait. Enjoy.
N.B.: As they do not take reservations, you might want to get there earlier and be prepared to wait until a table is ready for you. This is especially important when you’re with a large group.

Busaba Eathai at Hoxton Place came highly recommended when I was visiting the Old Street area for work recently. I ate there on a Thursday night and had no wait for a seat, which was one at a table of eight.
I had the coconut water with raspberry and the pad thai, which I thought was a bit odd in comparison to the pad thai I’ve had in the US. There were fried shrimp in it, which was a tad like eating fish food. The seating took some getting used to, especially for someone there alone, but the food came out quickly and the service was good.

The usual yummy squid, I got the coconut curry which had quite a few things in it I couldn’t/didn’t want to eat, like hard bits of lemongrass (I think) and whole green chilli, but overall I enjoyed it. I got the impression prices were higher than last time I visited but I might be mistaken. Service generally friendly and good although they do need to be attentive in the lunchtime period to people needing to pay the bill and get back to work — I delayed my friend by so long!

Amazing thai food!
So good I went back the next day to another location to try different dish…
Will definitely come back!

I’m going to go ahead and just shrug at the screen right now. You can’t see me doing it, but just imagine me wearing a cute outfit with my hair haphazardly thrown into a lopsided bun, yawning and shrugging.
Anyways, we ended up here the other night because the queue at Pizza East was stupid and we were drunk and needed immediate foodstuffs. We sat down right away. It was described to me as a Wagamama’s but with Thai food, and that’s a pretty apt description. I think Wagamama’s is actually more delicious, and I’m not even a huge fan. The food was instantly forgettable and I wish I had spent my £15 somewhere else. It wasn’t BAD, so if you need something to eat, by all means. One person in our party had good food — it was the pumpkin and sweet potato (I think?) curry, and it was really good. I was jealous.
Oh, also, the waitress tried to warn me off the jungle chicken, saying it was very spicy. If you like spicy food, you will be totally fine. It was not that hot.

Es buenísimo, precio muy económico, lugar muy bien decorado, comida precio calidad muy bien, atención al cliente perfecta. 10 sobre 10.

Aw c’mon! What’s with all the 3 stars!!!
Busaba is great with delicious fusion-​ish Thai food!
Loving the canteen style dining tables and the cool relaxing chill out atmosphere!
MM! Yummy drinks yum yum! Lemongrass and ginger pressé and their coconut water mixes are goooood!
Green papaya salad, calamari, morning glory and pad thai jay are on my to-​go list! Everything else is also good with alright prices. Portions aren’t huge, considering the pricing isn’t super expensive anyway.
Does get crowded on weekends and even weekday nights.