Thai Xpress

in my seemingly never-​ending quest to find good thai food in the city, i ordered from thai xpress the other day. i don’t get delivery very often but i was trying to recover from a hangover and it was cold outside so i felt like it was justified.
i placed my order through seamless and if you’ve ever used seamless then you know you can tip on your order up front. so in an effort to encourage fast delivery and also to avoid having my food spit in, i tipped a solid 25%. the estimated delivery time was 45 – 60 minutes.
over 2 hours later, i finally got my food. the delivery guy just handed me my food and walked away. no «hey, sorry we took 2 hours.» no, «hey, thanks for the generous tip that i didn’t actually earn.»
as far as i’m concerned i could end the review here because that’s completely unacceptable but in case you’re wondering, the food was just ok. definitely not worth the 2+ hour wait. needless to say, this place has been crossed off my list.

This place loses a star because it took almost 2 hours for delivery and I was ready to chew my own arm off. Given that it took that long, the food just barely qualified as lukewarm by the time it reached me.
That said, the food was still delicious. Best Thai delivery I’ve had in the city. I can just imagine if it’s actually hot; it would probably be a 5.

I’m really impressed with the quality of this delivery Thai food. This is much better food than the other popular Thai place that delivers in south philly. I’ve had the Thai Dumplings every time and they’re great. They even manage to keep them crisp for delivery. I’ve also had the Pad Kee Mow and the Massaman Curry. Both very delicious.

Recently, I was looking for an alternative to our typical Chinese delivery dinner and being a fan of Thai food, I decided to try Thai Xpress out. We were pleasantly surprised. The food was fresh tasting and plentiful. The spice level was exactly what we had asked for, hot was hot and made me sweat, medium had a nice kick without being bland.
The vegetables were crisp, the deep fried tofu was crispy and tasty, the seafood tasted fresh, but I wised there was more of it. We did order fairly standard Thai fare and I expect that we will be more adventurous next time.
All of the food was packaged well and was not handed to us in a dripping bag with all of the sauces mixed around, as is common with delivered food.
The staff was polite on the phone and when the food was delivered. It is hard to find decent delivered Thai food in this city, but this was a good experience and I expect that we will order from them again.

Risky Fish Order Pays Off
I will vouch for the fish. This is what I’m telling you.
We took a crazy chance and it paid off. And I really kinda can’t believe it. I’d go so far to say that we’re typically adventurous as «all get out» in the daredevilin’ delivery department, but to order the whole crispy fish, for delivery, from an unknown, never-​been-​tried Thai restaurant? No! Why do such a destined-​to-​fail-​and-​disappoint us kinda thing? I can’t explain. An 18 dollar fish, by the way. Like I said, we’ve been known to take chances but this… I’d call it madness. We must have been seized by a madness. So I don’t know what came over us, but it happened and it was pretty great.
First of all, I couldn’t believe the size of this red snapper. They had to fold it almost in half to fit it up in the Styrofoam container. Note to self, become a thousandaire by creating the perfect whole-​fish take out container. I had to get down my big oval baking dish to serve it up. That should make you go, «Whoah. Whoah. That. Is. Big.»
The fish was cooked perfectly– moist and meaty fish, crispy crispy skin, lightly battered. It remained crispy through traveling too, even while covered in cilantro, Thai basil, hot Thai birds & red bells diced, since the sweet and hot chile sauce sauce was packed separately. It was so good. Listen, I love a whole fish, for my self… like a bear in the river, or whatever– swat swat tear it up… but this here whole fish was more than enough to split.
Anyway, I was beside myself with this fish… Look, we were sitting there, eating spicy, sweet crispy, chile-​spiked fish, tryin to watch a movie and I was the most annoying person ever. Kept bringin up the fish, «Can you believe this fish?» and «It’s not Thai hot like we asked, but it’s a little hot, it’s good right??» and then «MMmmm mmmm mmm“ing like a crazy person, Bob Wiley style.
Left a real cartoonishly stereotypical trash-​can-​in-​an-​alley type fish bone.
I gotta see about some of these other dishes, though… The red curry was not my favorite. I will say this, this Thai Xpress does indeed know what they’re doing with tofu. I have no knowledge of their meat meats, only the tofu, to date. In addition, I would like to note that I appreciate how they packed up the pad Thai for delivery– the way they kinda kept the bean sprouts to the side so they stayed fresh ‘n’ crispy and didn’t get wilty wormy. You know, also dug that they sent some side prik nam pla in case we needed a little saltier chile spicier…
I’m not sayin you’re the best, but you got me interested Thai Xpress! I give into almost-​rhyming way too much. But also, I wanna know why they leave the first «e» off for… is it for economy? Or something like that? Because I’ll tell you, I fell like the prices are a couple bucks lower that other joints and the portions are hefty-​like.
Plus, dishes are loaded with vegetables without making it all feel like filler. You know how sometimes your favorite drunken noodles suddenly seem inordinately onion-​filled and cabbagey? It’s a sad day. This is not the case here. I can attest to a sensible balance, a good kee mao noodle to veg ratio. And did I mention that they do up a good whole crispy fish? That was the best. Risky fish order pays off. That should have been my headline here. I’m gonna run and write that up at the top real quick.

Have ordered delivery from here twice, and both times was impressed by the quality of food. This is probably the best pad thai I’ve had in Philly (better than Smile Café or Erawan or Singha). They package it well, with peanuts and sriracha sauce in separate containers on the side. Also very good aubergine salad and panang curry. Will definitely order form here again (and am selfishly giving it positive ratings on Unilocal so it stays in business!!).

I’m really sorry to say it, but this place is godawful. The food is actually the worst Thai I’ve ever had, and I’ve had some real doozies in my day. Make sure you have a huge bottle of sriracha on hand, as you’ll need it if you want any flavor whatsoever.
The good news is that the delivery wasn’t too much past the estimated timeframe. So that’s good, I suppose.

I first ran into the wonderful food of chef Rany at the Unilocal party at Union Transfer a few nights ago. They were serving these tilapia fish chips with this powerful, high flavor sauce on top. It was an odd mix of tiny beans, herbs, peppers, sprouts, onions, and ginger… it tasted pickled. It did not taste like a Thai dish to me, and to my surprise my taste buds were spot-​on. This Thai restaurant was not serving Thai food at all. The very endearing chef, explained that it was Cambodian, her specialty. I later found the dish to be called Trey Cheau Choun (probably butchered the spelling a bit).
I found myself craving a full size portion of this addictive little dish, so I stopped by the restaurant, and again, I was treated very well. The staff treated me like an old friend (what place gives you a tea pot while you wait for takeout), and chef Rany went out of her way to make me a great meal. I also found out that they are going to add Cambodian to their menu, and that they do a quasi Cambodian buffet all day until 8:00 (the prices are ridiculously fair).
The reason this isn’t five stars, is because the salad I got with the meal was incredibly bitter. Full disclosure, I ordered a bitter seafood salad, but this was over the top bitter. I ended up picking out the bitter herbs and adding some lime juice to it, and that fixed it right up (at least to my liking). I have a feeling this will move to five stars after my next visit, because I can tell this little lady knows how to cook and wants to please her customers.
If you’re in the area, give this place a try. They want to succeed, the food is great, and they really make you feel welcome.

Last night we were looking for some good Thai food in a bit of a rush (we were famished). All I knew was that I wanted a lot of curry!
So we went to grubhub and ordered from Thai Xpress. The food was GREAT. I cannot express how satisfied we were with our meal. Everything was completely delicious and I got exactly what I wanted a whole lot of curry! (I cheated and ordered the curry that was a soup! Kao Soy Noodles which basically was like a huge vat of aromatic curry awesomeness. I was completely satisfied.
We also ordered some apps. in the form of veggie spring rolls and curry puffs all which met and exceeded our expectations! we will definitely be ordering from here in the future!