Thai Sa-On Restaurant

I was in Calgary in December, and within the frosted city, Thai Sa-​On serves as a warm haven of delicious Thai cuisine. Most importantly, the warmth comes not only in the form of great food, but also in the form of a warm welcome and friendly attitude.
I’ll start with the food. We ordered 4 dishes: the kao pad ka pao (basil fried rice), kao pad prik kang (red curry), kang kiew wan kai (yellow curry), and Jackie Chan’s favorite beef dish (ask the manager, and he’ll tell you). In addition to the coconut rice we ordered on the side, everything was delectable. The portion sizes are what you’d expect for Thai food (relatively large); for my group of 6 people I was in, what we ordered was just the right amount.
The restaurant itself is quite clean, well decorated, and comfortably lit. No negatives there.
On to the service. Maybe it was because of the –10 degree celsius temperature that day, or the fact that it was Boxing Day across Canada, but we were the only group in the restaurant at around 6:00PM. Whatever the case may be, the manager gave us his full attention. Not only was he attentive, he was also extremely friendly, and we had a lengthy conversation about the differences between America and Canada (as he sees it), his experiences living amongst Canadians (he’s from Thailand) for the past several decades, and even about Jackie Chan’s kung fu skills vs. two of his contemporaries’. Mind you, the food didn’t come out any slower as a result, even though he did take a bit longer to take our orders, since he clearly enjoys conversing with his patrons.
If you ever find yourself in Calgary, regardless of whether it’s under frigid circumstances, I highly, highly recommend giving this place a try. The food is delicious, and the manager is one of the most gracious, friendliest mangers I’ve ever met (he gave us the coconut rice for free!), and I’m usually not the talkative kind when it comes to dining at restaurants. In my mind, this place deserves 5 stars!

We had a large group for lunch. It took over 30 minutes for a server to even come by. One of the guests didn’t even get to eat as it took too long to even get a drink. Once we finally got service my dish never came. The server did not care at all or try to fix the problem. Just handed me the menu and said sorry. This place has gone waaaaaay down. What was once a place I loved to frequent has now become a place I will never come to again. At least there was some rice to eat. It’s sad to see a great establishment lose its way.

Second meal here and fantastic food again. Best Thai food I have ever had and it is one of my favourite things. One of Calgary’s beat restaurants. The service isn’t overly attentive so make sure you have everything you need when they come to you.

4 solid stars for this place! The food was all great! From the spring rolls to the dessert! Everything was really good!!! I ordered the coconut soup to start and it was delicious as a main I had the chicken with pineapple and ginger and it was excellent and the dessert, the fried banana with coconut ice cream was great too! I definitely recommend the food of this place! The wine was not bad, and they have an interesting selection of wines to pick from. The service was good too… I don’t have anything to complain about this place … Even when is not super fancy, the food was so good that I can definitely recommend it!

Delicious Thai food that tastes fairly authentic, but not quite the same as in Thailand (not quite their fault)! 5 stars to the coconut rice — could eat it without any accompanying curry, it is so creamy and fluffy at the same time! Some dishes are better than others, but the tom kha gai and larb are not to be missed. I’m looking forward to going back and trying more dishes soon!

Well this is definitely one of the most decorated thai restaurants I’ve ever been to. There are Buddha paintings and sculptures throughout the whole restaurant. There’s a picture of when Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson ate at the restaurant when filming Shanghai Noon.
Alright for the actual food review. The tom yum soup is amazing; it was light and refreshing with lots of flavor. Definitely very authentic. I ordered the yellow chicken curry as my meal. It was great and it comes with either white rice or coconut rice. There was enough for two meals but I’m on a business trip with no fridge in the hotel so I decided to overeat.
Bottom line: if it’s good enough for Jackie, it’s good enough for me.

Love love love. Lived in Thailand for a few years and it’s nice to get authentic Thai food here in Calgary. Takes me back to SE Asia. Wonderful place

I love this place. Works for lunch, take-​out or a nice little dinner date spot. Food is absolutely perfect every time, the service is friendly and I love asking for their recommendations to try something new. They’ve never let me down. Lots of unique artwork inside makes for an authentic atmosphere. LOVE IT HERE

Simply wonderful and authentic.
I love Thai food and had it all over the world, but this was a unique experience:
Great ambience, excellent décor, friendly, courteous, and speedy staff; tasteful, delectable food.
As a healthy vegetarian, I greatly appreciate the separate page in the menu. We had the green curry and rama curry. The tofu was great, and surprisingly NOT fried.
thanks

Great Atmosphere and Wine Selection, Sam will help you with the selection of Fine wines, The food is the best Thai food in Calgary, I have been to most, there are good restaurants but this one is special, the style and quality and presentation is superb, the whole fish, esp the one with onions, ginger, celery, fish cut into pieces, is my favorite item on the menu, the curries are to die for. Topped with the coconut rice and Thai Iced Tea, only a few true Thai restaurants serve «Thai iced tea» made with condensed milk, truly amazing! It’s always expensive since I like the most expensive items on the menu.

Kind of wanted Thai food after a lunch buddy was talking about it today. Ended up here and while it was ok, it wasn’t that really good food that you crave more of. On top of that I found it pretty expensive. An appetizer, curry, and two beers were $ 40. It’d be one thing if I had a vat of curry to take home but the portions I thought were too small for the price.
I got the Thai dumplings as an appetizer. There were pretty good although seemed a little under cooked (steamed) in places (read: overly doughy). I got a chicken curry based in coconut milk and passed on the coconut rice because I thought it would be too much coconut. Maybe they overcompensate the curry for people ordering coconut rice because there wasn’t that richness of coconut flavor I was expecting. It was decent curry I’m just not sure I’d be back/I’d rather try a new place.
The service was friendly if a bit slow at first (waited 10 mins to place my food order, but after that very attentive). The décor is all Buddha-​large Buddha faces everywhere.

This is a great Thai restaurant that I have enjoyed many a meal. This time favorite dish was the cashew chicken with chili paste, yum, so good. Read whole review on Where Pam Ate:
Enjoy!
Janet

This was a delicious spot for a quick, relaxing dinner. The service was fast and attentive and the menu is extensive. The food was really great, especially since it arrived at the table so quickly. The interior has lots of interesting décor to look at and it is fairly welcoming. I look forward to going back to try out some other menu items.

3.5÷5, +.5 for service.
I was dying for Thai food when I was in Calgary, and after a quick Unilocal search this restaurant came up. Seeing how I was nearby, I decided to try it out with two of my friends.
The interior is quite dark, be warned. It creates this intimate atmosphere where you would not want your noise level to go higher than a whisper. Oh well, it was a quiet night anyway.
I ordered a pad thai. The order came at around 10 minutes; reasonable for a non-​fast food place. The first thing I noticed was that the noodles they used were the extremely thin type, similar to phở. It tasted pretty good, though I rather the wider type of noodles that I usually get in other restaurants.
Service was very good; we were attended to from start to end. It’s definitely a place that I would recommend to would-​be visitors.

I really enjoyed the décor here, it was a great lunch location. It wasn’t super busy and the servers were accommodating, though there was somewhat of a communication barrier.
There was a large selection of food on the menu and the prices were fairly average for the downtown area. The food was very good, with a generous serving sizes. I had the drunken seafood, but I’d probably want to try one of their curries instead next time. Their coconut rice was pretty good too.
The only negatives were that they served our group of 10 our dishes all at different times, so by the time all the dishes were out, the first set of dishes were already cold. They kept our water filled and were pleasant enough. Definitely worth a try for a tasty lunch!

Amazing! We had dinner here on Saturday night around 7pm. The place was not too full and we got a table right away near the back of the restaurant. The restaurant is nicely decorated and quiet enough for a good date night. Our server was very friendly and helpful and brought us drinks quickly. We ordered Pad Thai and Panang Curry. After a not too long wait the food arrived and it was PERFECT. The Pad Thai had the most amazing sauce and it was somehow rich and thick and light all at the same time. The Panang curry was incredible as well and the shrimp was cooked perfectly. I will be going back as soon as I can!

Dropped by for takeout on my way home from work because I had a craving for pad thai. This place was on the way, so I thought why not.
Pros:
Entered the restaurant and got to order right away
Order came out quickly
Semi-​friendly service
Interesting décor inside
Cons:
A little pricey for the serving you get (I’ve paid $ 4 less for pad thai that was double the serving and tasted A LOT better)
Order came out quickly
Pad thai was dry, really dry (so I am guessing they pre-​make a bunch and it just sits there for hours)
I most likely won’t be back again unless a group of people want to go, then I will try something different.

I went there during lunch time with a friend and the place was packed (but not totally full) with lunch crowd from nearby offices. We got seated but it took another 10 minutes for water to come and another 15 minutes for the server to come by to take our orders. This place seriously lacks serving staff during lunch.
Once our orders were in it only took less than 10 minutes for our food to arrive, which is quite strange with the number of tables on hand and their slow service. My conclusion is that a lot of things on their menu are pre-​made and just sits around for hours at a time until someone orders them. Our pad thai came out dry and doesn’t have the freshly made feel (no sense that it came out from a wok). Our curry dish was nothing special either. For the prices that this price was charging, I expected the food to be much better than this. There are many many Thai places around town that are better. Service was non existent. Our water was never refilled. This is not a place I recommend… at least not during lunch hour. Maybe this place is good for dinner (with all the positive reviews) but I do not intend to come back and find out.

OK, so this place is incredible. It does not look like that much from the outside but step inside and be surprised. The place is actually quite large, very clean and the décor just makes you want to sit and relax. The staff and service was exceptional and the food was so good.
I definitely recommend this place and will be back for more my self.

I’ve heard about this place for years through my colleagues and finally got to experience it firsthand. Sammy is quite the host! We let him pick our food and wine. The two dishes that really stuck out for me were the beef jerky and drunken chicken. I actually can’t find the beef jerky on their online menu but that’s what we called it.
The wine he brought over was a Didier Dagueneau Blanc Fume de Pouilly which had very good minerality and acidity balanced with fruit. It went very well with the food.
I’ve heard the stuffed chicken wings are to die for. Next time…