Siam House

3520 Connecticut Ave. NW

Washington, DC 20008

202.363.7802

Hours:

Monday – Thursday 11am – 3pm & 4:30pm – 10pm

Friday 11am – 11pm

Saturday 12pm – 11pm

Sunday 12pm – 10pm

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Not all restaurants are created equal.  Nor do they all serve the same purpose.  With every restaurant more organic than the one before, it is a breath of fresh air to see the words “all natural ingredients, no MSG” proudly plastered on the Siam House website.  Situated on a corner in Cleveland Park, Siam House seats maybe 30 people and serves up simple, no thrill Thai.  Family owned and operated, Siam exists in restaurant purgatory, not qualitatively bad but nothing to write home about.

Recommended to me by a friend, Siam House’s lunch special is really good value.  For $9.95 you get a starter and an entrée of your choice, plus a drink.  In a city that is quickly becoming devoid of value + good food, Siam House seems like one of the last bastions.  For the starter I ordered Tom Kha with Chicken, a hot and sour soup with mushrooms in coconut milk.  The entrée was the predictable drunken noodles, rice noodles sautéed with basil leaves, tomatoes, chili, and garlic.

The broth for the Tom Kha was sweet, with a lemon tang back flavor that established a creamy sweetness; a traditional Thai flavor, it was called to action that much more when paired with the lifeless chicken.  Rubbery, with no semblance of dimensional flavor, the pieces of chicken were lost.  Luckily, where the chicken failed, the slices of grapevine tomatoes shone.  Crispy with an unhampering fragrance, the tomatoes, paired with the low-key smokiness of the mushrooms, were exemplified in the sour broth.

The drunken noodles were a by-the-book affair.  The noodles were fresh with a heat that slowly built at the end of the palette.  The chicken, as it was in the Tom Kha, was an afterthought; it was dry and overcooked.  None of the flavors linked with each other, the green peppers providing a singular texture that seemed out of place.  The biggest gripe with the dish was the absorbent quality of the noodles; they took on way too much of the cooking oil, creating an immediate sogginess.  As the dish became cooler this aspect stormed to the forefront and the dish instantly became average.

Good value with food that is simple and unsurprising, Siam House does what it strives to do.  The flavors are unassuming and the typical missteps that are seen in average food are seen here.  But with that being said, Siam House isn’t all that bad; fresh ingredients propel this place forward, establishing as a legitimate option for a quick, safe Thai lunch.

–Amendment202

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