Linda Modern Thai

I had heard about this place years ago, finally tried the prix fixe menu for $ 25 for dinner the past weekend. It wasn’t the worst Thai food, but it didn’t really impress me either.
Thai food is one of my favourite cuisines. I tried the appetizer of calamari– which was good and flavourful. I tried the Penang chicken curry– a red curry spicy sauce topped with grilled chicken, it came with rice. Packed with flavour and a punch of heat as I requested. My friends Thai basil tofu looked very underwhelming, just the deep fried tofu You buy at the supermarket sitting a top of a sauce and Bok Choy. Not impressive. I’ve seen and tasted better. The dessert I had the fried bananas which was timbit shaped banana bites with a honey sauce– it didn’t come with any ice cream or whipped cream as I expected. This is one of my most favourite ‘Thai desserts’ and I sorely missed the ice cream.
The waitress was incredibly polite and attentive and accommodated substituting chicken for the beef for us as we don’t eat red meat.
I would come here if I’m in the area but won’t drive out to it. But am still on the hunt for really good Thai food!

Went to Linda’s today for lunch today with my daughter. I have to honestly say that this was the worst Thai food I have ever tested. The service was extremely poor no one ever come to see if we needed or how was the food. The only thing that was great about the experience was the décor. We paid $ 60 dollars for lunch, they have charged us $ 10 for two teas and the leaves were not made of gold either! Not great food or value sums up Linda Modern Thai.

Went to Linda’s today for lunch, didn’t know winterlicious was on. The greeter did tell us ahead of time and that regular menu selection was limited. Servers in general were very pleasant and very quick to help out and refill the water (even though it was very busy)
I decided to try the winterlicous menu, which was reasonably priced at $ 18
I had some Thai sausage appetizer, the flavour was great, and the food temperature let me know it was just made. The portion though was a little scarce. It was a sausage about 5 cm long cut diagonally into 4 pieces. My friend had the fried ribs, which looked good, better size portion, but being fried, didn’t expect it to be cold and a bit soggy (probably sitting there for a while).
My main was the chicken curry. The dice was nice, but had only 5 thin pcs of an already small chicken. Had to really portion the meat to rice ratio.
Dessert was a bit of a savior to the meal, I had a trifle with fruit. Once again tiny portion, but good flavour and quite refreshing.
Overall, the place looks really nice, but was not wowed by the food or the portion sizes.

As Canada’s first select Thai premium restaurant and is owned by the same people as Salad King, I had very high expectations for Linda Modern Thai. The restaurant is conveniently located in Shops at Don Mills, and the décor is absolutely beautiful. It has a high ceiling and some pillars that provide a very classy, but modern atmosphere.
I visited the restaurant along with three coworkers for lunch on a Friday. My coworker told me that the restaurant is not usually busy, but maybe because it was a Friday, we were not seated immediately (the wait was only about five minutes). Unfortunately, we were unaware that there was a closet for our coats until we saw a server open it and hang a customer’s coat after we were already seated for some time. We would have liked it if the server told us about the closet instead of having us find out ourselves.
Overall, the service was great, but the food took a while to arrive. We waited for about 30 minutes for our food. We only had an hour for lunch, so we were pretty tight on time. Make sure that you have plenty of time to sit at the restaurant during a busy Friday period and even reserve a table if possible.
My coworker and I got the Royal Pad Thai. I really liked the presentation of the dish because the pad thai itself is inside an egg wrap. The sweet and sour elements were delicious, but I have had better pad thai at other restaurants before. Linda Modern Thai prides itself of its «award-​winning» pad thai, but I just didn’t think that the flavour justified a high price of $ 18. Regardless, the noodles tasted great, but I found the chicken a bit dry and hard to chew.
My other coworker got the Tom Yum Goong (hot and sour soup), and she was slightly unimpressed because she was expecting it to be more creamy. Linda serves it with a clear broth, which is a different version of Tom Yum Goong that other restaurants may serve. She also felt that the soup smelled like cleaning supplies, which was not very appetizing. She also got the entrée size mango salad, but she wasn’t full after eating it.
My fourth coworker got the golden curry with crispy beef. He didn’t have any complaints for his curry. In fact, he really enjoyed it. However, he noted that even though he asked for the spiciness level to be the highest, he felt that it was definitely less spicy than Srirarcha sauce.
I would certainly visit Linda Modern Thai again because the food has great flavours, but I would like to try the curry instead. In addition, I would only visit the restaurant if I had time to spare.

Tried this place for the first time tonight, no reservations and had to wait 5 or 10 mins before seating.
Food: me and my boyfriend order pad Thai and crispy duck which is similar to Peking duck. Once the order arrived I’d have to say I’m not all that impressed. The crispy duck ruined the taste of Peking duck, nothing close to similarity and left it tasting like fried chicken. The pad Thai is nothing to rave bout either.
Overpriced and service wasn’t the greatest. Next time you want Thai I suggest somewhere else. Thai iced tea wasn’t the greatest either.

Ambience & décor: ethnic-​modern, classy. High ceilings, exquisite works of art, beautiful entrance door, comfy booths & tables.
Food & service: courteous & friendly. They have adequate vegetarian choices as lunch specials. My vegetarian vermicelli noodles (Bangkok stir fry) was interestingly presented. The portion sizes are generous & appropriately priced. They include rice with the curries which makes complete sense unlike some places where you have to order rice separately.
Tried the Doi Chaang filter coffee for the first time. It is was very flavorful.
This place deserves a 4 star.

I came here today for lunch with a group of 7 hungry coworkers. After learning that Linda was launched by the same owners of Salad King, I went in with pretty high expectations (I love Salad King!).
THE GOOD:
— I had the panang curry with crispy beef, and it was a hit — I’d give it ⁴⁄₅ stars. My favourite part was the beef itself, which was tender, juicy and battered — and the light batter coating made for a nice crunch. I’ve never had crispy beef quite like this before. The curry came with rice and was full of flavour overall. It was $ 15 — I thought this was good value.
THE BAD:
— I understand that lunchtime on Friday is a busy time, but we were really disappointed with the service. We ordered our mains and waited over an hour for our food! The waitress did not come by at any point to apologize for the wait, either. Disappointing.
— The ambience inside and prices were not terrible, but average at best — comparable to other Thai restaurants in the city.
While I enjoyed my meal — particularly the battered beef in my curry — I don’t think I would return to Linda again.

This was an excellent place for dinner when visiting Shops at Don Mills. I’m on a quest to try every restaurant in the area, and Linda Modern Thai did not disappoint. The atmosphere was quaint and cosy and had very nice décor. Not too crowded even for a Saturday night, and opentable points always put a smile on my face. What I will say however is that we were seated awkwardly close to our neighbour table, such that conversations could easily be overheard. I felt quite strange at one point listening about someone’s romantic escapades, and did not wish to talk about any of my own for fear of being judged.
The food however was a redeeming point. Deviating from traditional thai dishes, my girlfriend and I opted for the spring lamb and the steak. Both were cooked perfectly and the peanut sauce on top was absolutely delicious. I was very satisfied and wasn’t expecting to get such a well cooked steak here of all places. Next time I visit however, I will be trying multiple other dishes more characteristic of Thai cuisine.

I had crispy beef with green curry and it was absolutely amazing. The restaurant is on the pricier side, but it definitely worth extra money. Lunch portion was very generous. Highly recommended. Will definitely be back again.

Long-​loved restaurants. Came here for like the 10^th time and happened to be Summerlicious. This is my first time trying out their Summerlicious menu and I gotta say — hated it.
We ordered the Red curry duck off of the regular menu and it was delicious as always. The Summerlicious menu item — deep fried chicken — came out with blood in between the wing /​chest area. You are not supposed to have Blood in chicken — contains tons of bacteria.
The waitress brought the dish back to kitchen and deep fried again, which came out with no blood but outside was too overcooked to bite into.
Overall I would suggest stay away from the Summerlicious/​Winterlicious menu, just go with the regular curry and you’ll be fine.

Summerlicious Lunch of 2015
For $ 18 (before tax and tip), you get a 3 course meal with an app, main dish, and dessert. Value alone this was worth it. However, please don’t expect authentic thai food and compare it to places like pai or khao san road.
Linda is more of a fusion thai place where western style food meets some thai spices.
Food:
App: Thai sausages — the selection is different each day and today, they had chicken sausages. The portion was good. The sausages had a nice spice to it. The sweet chilli sauce used to dip the sausages was really good. It didn’t taste like store-​bought so perhaps, it was homemade? B
Main: I got the golden chicken curry and rice, and my partner got the thai tacos.
Golden chicken curry — the portion of this dish was huge, but I wasn’t expecting a piece of chicken breast cut up and laid out on top of the curry. Usually the chicken is mixed in with the curry. The dish wasn’t bad. The chicken was very tender, which I really enjoyed. The curry itself was missing an authentic thai quality (i cant explain it), but I would say, it definitely felt like a fusion dish to me. I liked it. B+
Thai Tacos — I advise against ordering this. There were three tacos and the ingredients weren’t filled to the top. My partner was not full. The taco wraps tasted like they were a day old and from no frills. The filling itself was tasteless. In my opinion, a very poorly made dish — I guess that’s what we get for ordering tacos at a thai place! D
Dessert: Panacotta — Very light. I could taste the coconut milk. B
Pandan Custard — I really liked this. The egg custard melted in my mouth. B+
Thai ice tea — definitely was not worth $ 5. A small glass filled half with ice and not very sweet. C–
Service: Our server was lovely. The thai ice tea took awhile to get to us, but she explained why. The food also took a bit longer to get to us, but our water was always filled and people were always checking on us to make sure we were okay.
Ambience: The place does get an A for décor. It’s beautiful inside. I could see people celebrating a special occasion here for the beautiful décor. The food wasn’t the best, but perhaps, their regular menu will be better. Personally, I will just stick to Pai the next time I have a thai craving.
Overall, I gave this place a 3. The food was a 2, but the service and ambience brought it up to 3.

I come here regularly for food coz it’s so good. Love their green and panama curry. Today the Thai taco skin was a bit dry. But flavour is good. The pad Thai is pretty good, has the sweet and sour element pretty balanced, but flavour wasn’t as strong as I would’ve liked. But otherwise it was very good food! I’m giving it 4 star this time coz the two items weren’t as good today, but normally you cannot go wrong with the green or panang curry… They are incredible!

I like this place. I always forget how much until I go and then end up wondering why I don’t come more.
Outside– the restaurant is located at shops of don mills. It has a cool façade that makes me feel kinda cool walking into. There’s outside seating. Its still cold out so its closed but I feel it must give a great view of the comings and goings of the plaza (cool).
Décor — its kinda weird. You walk in and it feels like its going to be a super fancy restaurant. Its not BTW, which is AWESOME. There are lots of dark pillars which is nice, it gives you some semblance of privacy. The restaurant is smaller than it looks on the outside. The best part of the restaurant is a giant sequin, shiny Buddha statue in the middle. If you get to sit by it, you have something special to look at!
Wait staff — this is hit or miss. Don’t get me wrong. Everyone is proficient. I’m not sure if they are told to be not so smiley and friendly, its not that they are mean and rude, its just they never smile. Ever. Well at least no one I’ve ever had
Food — ok this is what really counts! The food is really good. I’ve never had anything I didn’t like. Ok I just lied. The desserts level a lot to be desired but there lots of places to go for dessert in the plaza.
Their vegetarian entrees are worth coming g here for. Yum. Also, the beef panang. I want to eat this every Saturday! Every Saturday!
Price– right, so when I get the bill I remember why I don’t come here more. I hate paying that much for Thai. But it is really good, so my every once and a while visits are fine!
Go, its good!

It wasn’t cool when I walked out of Linda with an upset stomach after realizing the food here were too heavy for me to handle.
The interior is a mix of nice and weird. There was a group of 4 sitting at the table next to us. They were separated by the red dividers at the centre and were talking across the «holes» during their entire dinner.
Linda is the upscale version of Salad King. I actually find Salad King had better food. The food weren’t too bad but lacked complex flavours in Thai food.
We started with the Fried calamari. It was quite good with the hot sauce.
I like the crispy beef in our Panang curry. However the curry was way too rich and I ended up having an upset stomach.
The Taro dumplings and khannom jeen noodles was my favourite dish. The taro was wrapped in a fried flaky pastry and the taro inside was soft and mushy. It was an interesting texture and the noodles were flavourful.
Royal Pad Thai with Chicken was wrapped inside an egg wrap. Presentation was interesting but the Pad Thai was mediocre. The chicken was pretty rough.
My mistake was to order a Singapore Sling. It was awesome. A sling that is delicious is hard to come by and I should not experiment it at a Thai restaurant. What was I thinking?
My suggestions:
Go to Salad King for the same food with half the price, or go to better Thai restaurants (ex. Khao San Road, Pai, etc) for better food for around the same price.

This is my favorite thai restaurant in Toronto. It’s classy and authentic.
Panang curry with crispy beef. That’s all I have ever ordered and it’s heavenly. The beef is so nicely cooked and the genius of it’s crispy texture goes so well with the complex sauce it bathes in.
It is in my opinion the best restaurant at shops at don mills (yes i have tried them all). And makes for a perfect date location because of the nice walks possible in the summer, free parking, and proximity to a very nice movie theater.

Came here recently for dinner.
The staff seemed nice. My party wanted to switch tables to a more private area & they were very patient with us. However, I felt the entrees took forever to come out. We were there at 8pm and did not get our mains until 9pm. Appetizers took about 15 mins after ordering. It was not a particularly busy night. There was only one larger group of 8? and some tables of 2 – 4.
We ordered & shared the.
Calamari — overpriced (as w/​the rest of the menu) but good. definitely better with the chilli sauce.
Sausage — wow skip this. it reminded me of dishwasher detergent.
Grilled fish (sea bass?) — I did not taste this so can’t comment. but those who ate it were not too particularly happy w/​how it was grilled w/​the tin foil covering it.
Pad Thai — it was interesting as it was covered with a thin egg omlette all around w/​the islamic noodles inside. quite nice.
Pannang Curry — I liked this dish best. very tasty! the beef was cooked well and very very tender.
Green Curry — nice dish but not that particularly tasty. i had asked the waitress for hot sauce but never got it.
I felt the portions could be slightly bigger for the curry dishes. It’s a wonderful restaurant but service was slow.

We came here for dinner and was greeted by a very friendly waiter :) From first glance, the décor had a really traditional Thai feel but still lived up to the modern in its name. I quite liked the interior of this resto! Combo of gold and oak made everything very classy :)
This is a mid-​scale Thai resto so the pricing is higher than Salad King and is similar to Sukho Thai. We ordered the Coconut Seafood Curry and Spring Lamb with Peanut Gravy for our mains.
The curry was absolutely delicious! I always like only a tinge of sweet in my curries — the one I had at Sukho Thai a while back had a bit too much and in combination with the cream became overpowering. This one was creamy to the right extent and the seafood was to die for. My favourite was the squid! This dish also came with jasmine rice.
We also ordered the spring lamb medium rare and it was quite juicy :3 We liked the sauce a lot but I didn’t actually taste any peanut… all the better because I don’t really like the peanut taste in salty dishes.
Dessert!
1) Mango Sticky Rice: Looks very pretty, tastes almost as pretty. I thought the rice could be a bit sweeter, but it was balanced out by the mango — not bad!
2) Mango Roll with Ice Cream: DEELISHUS. I wasn’t a huge fan of the fried shell that the mango custard nested in, it’s oily if you have too much of it but the mango custard was amazing. I don’t know how they made it but I will now begin looking for these in Asian supermarkets. The papaya ice cream also tasted amazing with the mango sauce over it
I would definitely go back again to try more dishes on the menu! I’m a fan :)

Linda’s Modern Thai Cuisine, why not? So we decided to try out some Thai food at Shoppes on Don mills. I first thought to myself «This place looks nice!» So an automatic 5 stars for décor. The atmosphere was a little quiet but nice (it was a weeknight). Our Korean server was nice and a great server who knew the menu pretty well. Overall she was great, even though she did pull the I have a bf line when we tried to set her up with my friend.
Anyways back to the review. The food was delicious. We started with Mieng Kum, Pla Meuk Tod (Fried Calamari), and Tom Yum Goong soup, and our entrees were The Royal Pad Thai, Thai Islamic Noodles, and Seafood Fried Rice. We ended the meal off with Mango Sticky Rice. (To see all the food and descriptions check out my photos). Although it was not what I was expecting because it was more of a modern taste. I am used to eating authentic Thai cuisine, so that’s why I can’t give the food a solid 5.

I was here with a party of 10 for my first visit. We actually had to push out our reservation twice and they we’re nice enough to accommodate. We came for the Summerlicious menu (which had a lot of options in comparison to other Summerlicious menus).
I started off with the chicken lemongrass siu mai. I received three pieces which was fairly generous. The chicken was perfectly cooked and juicy. I was happy that the lemongrass DIDN’T take a back seat.
For the entrée I ordered the smoked duck breast with quinoa. As soon my order arrived I could smell the smoke and I couldn’t wait to dig in. I loved every last bite. The portion was more than generous. My only wish would be to have bigger pieces of duck. I also didn’t feel that this dish had anything Thai in it.
We also ordered two pad Thais and a grilled chicken in Panaang sauce for the table. The pad Thai was actually wrapped in the egg which was cool. But it was a huge let down in terms of flavor. I actually didn’t try the chicken so I will not comment on it.
For dessert I had the deep fried milk pudding. Some people at the table felt like it was visually unappealing. I didn’t have a problem with it. I actually liked it. It wasn’t too sweet and that’s what I liked about it.
Overall, very few complaints about the food. Based on my experience I wouldn’t call this a great Thai restaurant. Because the pad Thai wasn’t up to par, the sui mai is more of a Chinese dish (with a Thai influence via the lemongrass), and the smoked duck with quinoa really didn’t scream Thai either. But one thing it’s for sure, I’m not complaining at all about the taste and quality of the food. I also was fortunate to try the crispy brisket in panaang sauce and it was incredible!
Or server was AWESOME!!! she did a great job with such a large group. Our water would get filled as soon as it was low. We actually stayed way past closing and we didn’t feel as though we were rushed. Truly exceptional service.

This review is based on my lunch experience at Summerlicious 2014.
I was not expected much for $ 15 but I am happy to report that Linda Modern Thai did not cheap out on food quality or portion even during Summerlicious!
Chicken Lemongrass Pork Siu Mai
Crispy Beef Panang (Gaeng Panang)
Deep Fried Milk Pudding
All was really solid and especially the main was just the same size as regular $ 13 lunch and here they charging $ 15 for a 3 course.
I ate the level 15 spiciness and I survived. Maybe I should go for the ultimate next time?
Service was spotty though as the place was packed and I sat at the corner of the patio.
I will be back!