Thanu’s Kitchen

Bad thai food used to be called green papaya now it reopened as thuan’s kitchen. Went in because they were having half off deal. It was the worst thai food I ever had. I had pad thai and it was bland as could be with raw tofu… Gross!

Summary base on 1 take out lunch:
–cheated on Thai Noodles to try this relatively new place
–got pad see ew with specified kana/;Chinese broccoli instead of hateful American broccoli. Some consternation, but successful. Seemed to have less veg and more noodles than usual.
–my impression is that ths place is somewhat more expensive than nearby comparables, but still cheap overall. Lot’s of competition in this area.
–food took a while to come out, though place wasn’[t busy
–friendly service
–parking challenging (downtown Berkeley, duh)
–no wifi sniffed

I stopped for lunch this during the noon hour. I have been there before and they were ok. It was a little frustrating today. The service was pretty slow and the service staff seemed grumpy. The staff should be happy and cheery and timely between 12 and 1, that is the big lunch hour.
The food I got was pretty good, the food they serve is not the 100% best in the world but a relative good value. Anyway I had to take the rest with me, back to work because they were slow and I was not able to finish. When I went to finish my food I saw a long black hair that looked very suspicious. I’m just saying… I was let done by you Thanu’s kitchen, it’s going to take a lot for me to go back there. I don’t like finding hair in my food that’s not mine.

2050 Shattuck is in the middle of the street, seeing as Revival on the corner is 2102 and Half Price Books on the very next corner is 2036. Phantom Thai restaurant. Yet there is a similarly named «Thanu’s Kitchen» up the block at 2016.

Good food, nice ambience, and friendly service = 3 stars
No extra cost for brown rice: +1 = 4 stars

One of my quest since moving here to the bay is to search for authentic Thai food, I have found a few decent ones. So I was excited to try food at Thanu’s kitchen when it first open a few months back.
It was promising, I tried various dishes over a period of few weeks after the restaurant was open. The food was relatively decent. For Thai, I will give 3 stars rating for their food.
But there is one dish that strike out as a promising dish which is «the duck stew». That dish was absolutely delicious and very authentic, very similar to what I had back when I was in Thailand. This particular item should earn them «5 stars».
So 4 stars for this place
However, Today, In a mood of the delicious duck stew, I decided to travel down the hill to Thanu’s kitchen again. I have my mind well set, right after I got into the restaurant, and ordered the stew. The dish comes out really disappointing. The soup was delicious but the duck is dried and chewy, the soup and the flavor of herb from the stew did not penetrate to the duck even a tiny bit which should not be the case for the stew! This make me question about the freshness of the duck offered here.
The unpredictability reduces 2 stars for them!

Ambient-​wise, it is clean but can use more lights.

«Whoa», I said spotting the sign while driving by, «huh — we need to go there». Someone (presumably the owner) has adorned their face on the sign in front quite ostentatiously, and, as we were soon to learn, all over the restaurant and menus. A little biggity, if you ask me.
Was not impressed. We stopped for dinner, very mediocre curry and pad thai.
New Thai places perpetually sprout up on a monthly basis in Berkeley (and die as readily). This place only lends itself to that end and the general despair of ethnic restaurants that you bohemian hipsters trend on about so haphazardly.

Hands down, the worst Thai food I have ever eaten. Ever. I came here after a late graduation and it was one of very few restaurants still open and could seat 7 people. Now let me tell you, there’s a reason why it was fairly empty. The food was just so confusing… and tasteless. We tried 6 plates and the thai tea: vegetable shitake (bland and small portioned); garlic sautee chicken (probably the best dish of the night but not better than thai basil’s); egg bomb fried rice (is this really fried rice? it looked like they dumped a bag of chopped frozen veggies over rice and a single fried egg); lord noodle (lord, have mercy! what did i just eat??? it was just confusing); and last their signature dish of curry fried rice… (mixed review from our group… Viet momma liked it, Chinese girl hated it). Thai tea was not bad, pretty tasty. We thought that it would be authentic Thai food because the waitress was speaking Thai… we were wrong. The service was okay, waitress was okay. Nothing exceptional. 18% gratuity for larger parties is automatically added… good thing we checked the receipt. Not coming back, food pales in comparison to Racha’s, Thai Basil and Thai House.

Thanu’s is a new restaurant with excellent food and excellent, professional yet warm, friendly service. The chef has created a number of delicious Thai dishes that have new (but decidedly Thai) flavors in subtle combinations. We would highly recommend the green noodle and seafood appetizer/​salad, any of the five or six superb curry dishes, and the exquisite roti (bread). It’s a surprise that Thanu’s is so reasonably priced.

Extremely slow service & mediocre Thai food. I’m glad I only paid $ 4 for my lunch special.

With the transition from Green Papaya, it’s gone from exceptional to acceptable. Less diverse menu, less flavorful food. Still very nice people.

**This is based on a catered/​fundraising event so I can’t really comment on the pricing or the location.
I got the pad thai (with chicken only) and pad kee mao. I’m traditionally a pad thai type of person but in this case I actually preferred the pad kee mao. The pad thai was a bit dry and I felt the pad kee mao was also more flavorful. Overall though I still prefer Thai Basil on the basis of food alone but props to Thanu for supporting local organizations.

My friend mentioned a new Thai place and I was really thrilled to see if this would be a suitable alternative to Thai Basil and Berkeley Thai House.
Located on west side, it is a quite a walk from North or South side, but the deal was too good to pass up.
We ordered the Duck Fried Rice, Pad See Ew, and a Thai Iced Tea.
The Thai Iced Tea came first and it was too sweet. On the bright side, if it is too sweet you can keep drinking and adding more water, getting more for your money.
The Pad See Ew was decent. Although the portions are a tad smaller than Thai Basil’s, the chicken was actually not too dry and tough. The noodles could use more flavor.
The Duck Fried Rice was fatty! I guess I’m not too surprised since it’s duck, but I think the dish would be perfect if they stripped the fat out, left the meat, and fried the skin. The fried rice had plenty of flavor, although it was relatively saturated with soy sauce.
I think this place has great potential for becoming a regular destination for students. Thanu’s Kitchen just needs to polish up their dishes a little more.

We met some friends here not knowing that Green Papaya had morphed into Thanu’s Kitchen. As Jennifer has said the interior is pretty much the same and the wait staff is incredibly nice.
The menu is almost the same except for the addition of meat. My hubby thought that overall the food was not as good as GP.
We started off with appetizers; one of their strong points.
We had:
Chicken Satay – five tiny sticks which my son and our friends declared ok.
(Mr. Rinky and I abstained)
The corn fritters were delicious. Crispy hunks of corn incased in a crunchy batter served with a semi sweet peanut sauce.
Taro fritters… different than GP but tasty.
Potato «turnovers» —small, crispy samosa triangles — also tasty.
The entrees:
Pumpkin Curry was okay. We’ve had so much better at other places.
Pad See Zew – tasty.
Some other noodle dish that was a bit mushy.
Pineapple Rice – okay. I remember GP’s version served in a hollowed out pineapple with sweet, fresh pineapple and a lot more cashews.
I’m not sure if we’ll return anytime soon. We have at least three other Thai places closer to us that we like better.

Thanu’s kitchen is the new, meatier (literally), version of Green Papaya. The inside pretty much looks the same. The wait staff was incredibly nice — I talked to one of the waiters and it sounds like they kept most of the same people from Green Papaya. They are still getting their footing with the cooking, though — he said right now it’s just the owner cooking everything, so it’s a bit of a wait for your food. The woman who placed her take out order before me was waiting for a very long time, and had politely inquired a few times about how much longer it would take — both the waiter and waitress were extremely nice and apologetic, and gave her a free thai iced tea while she waited.
I was skeptical about the change, because I really liked Green Papaya the way it was. But there really isn’t much that is different about Thanu’s, which actually pleases me. I must say, I do like the new menu, though — it’s much more organized, and is easier to read than the old one. It has most of the same food, with the biggest difference being you can add meat to the dishes, where in the past it was all tofu.
I had the eggplant dish — which was great — I love eggplant and usually get eggplant in garlic sauce at any Thai place I go to, and Thanu’s was solid. My only complaint is that the pieces of chicken were pretty small and sparse, but the eggplant was great, and the sauce was very good (i dumped all of my brown rice into it when I was done eating the eggplant and chicken, and just devoured the rice covered in the delicious sauce. mmmm). My boyfriend got the pumpkin curry, and the only difference I noticed was that the tofu wasn’t fried like it used to be in that dish — I actually would’ve preferred it fried.
Overall it doesn’t seem like much has changed, so if you’re a vegetarian and were skeptical of the change, I hope your fears are assuaged, and if you’re a meat-​eater like me, then rejoice in the fact that you can now get your meat fix at Thanu’s, with the same quality of food and service as Green Papaya.