Emporium Thai Cuisine

Who would have thought such a perfect Thai gem would be in the middle of Westwood, known mostly for it’s suberb Persian restaurants? Having traveled to Thailand, I can be a little picky with my Thai food. Emporium Thai didn’t disappoint me at all…
You may have read or heard about Jitlada, which is considered one of the best Thai restaurants in the country, let alone Los Angeles, and it is GREAT, but EMPORIUM is the sister restaurant, and one of the only real differences is that Emporium is a lovely little restaurant in Westwood as opposed to a dive in a strip mall in Hollywood
The place is small, but clean and well kept. Service was outstanding. We were greeted and seated immediately. The restaurant is family-​owned. The manager stopped at each table to ask how everyone enjoyed their food.
However, the food was awesome. The ability to control your spiciness level is a nice touch. My Chef Special Pad Thai at Level 5 made my eyes water (and I usually do not find food spicy). All of our meals were generous portions and flavorful. The meals came out slightly staggered (which indicates that everything is fresh made and served immediately).
Street parking and can be challenging at times. Also recieve a free Thai Iced tea with Unilocal Check-​in
I will be back soon

Pad Thai is good-4.0 Stars
Chicken Satay-4.5 Stars
Thai Tea-​5 stars
Red Curry-4.5 stars
Coconut Chicken soup-4.0 stars
Service-5.0 stars
Street parking is tough, especially if getting it to go. They should provide curbside service to help out in that area. Otherwise it is a great place for a date, getting it to go, or a simple business meeting. They don’t rush you out.

Slow service, no service at times, and plain crappy food.
Ordered lunch specials and didn’t get salad or eggrolls until we asked. Never got water refills also.
Please don’t waste your time with this place. Way overhyped for a busy place that cannot manage the high volume.

The food is average but quite expensive for what you get. If i was craving thai food and had no other option i would come here but other than that its quite mediocre

I’ve been to Emporium Thai religiously these past four years while going to college nearby. I can honestly say this is the best Thai restaurant I have ever dined at. I’ve gone through so many items on the menu over the course of my undergraduate career, but my favorites are the Pad Woonsen and the spicy mussel soup! Nothing I have tried has been disappointing though, so know that you probably won’t go wrong here :) Service is wonderful, and their Thai iced tea deal is awesome, especially for broke college students like me haha

I always make sure to visit Emporium Thai when I visit my sister here at UCLA! If you love Thai food or just food in general, MAKE SURE TO STOP BY HERE! The vibe, the people, the FOOD are all on point!
Starting with Pad Woon Sen, it’s glorious. The ample serving of vegetables harmonizes perfectly with the sticky noodles. The flavor is just amazing and is a must try for veggie and noodle lovers alike.
The pad see ew is as great as they come. Perfect broccoli and perfect wide noodles!
Also check in for a free Thai iced tea! It won’t disappoint.

It’s a great neighborhood restaurant in the south of Wilshire for either dining in or take out. It’s a bit on the pricier side compare to its competitors around the area, but you can tell the difference in quality.
Also to get the best deal, I would recommend going for the lunch special on weekdays $ 12 dinning in (+$ 1 for checking out)
I got the Pad Thai (level 5). Warning this place cooks with legitimate heat. (You’ll want the Thai iced tea to balance the heat)
If you’re around Westwood or crave some Thai takeout I recommend it!

I first heard about this place through SEA Admit program. And I finally came here for my friend’s birthday dinner. There were 18 of us and the waitress was super patient, nice, and friendly. I ordered the crying tiger (beef) and my boyfriend got the southern chicken curry. Both dishes were on point! The medium spicy southern chicken was just the right level of spicy. My friend got the #4 spicy and I was breathing out fire. I usually get the pork crying tiger but I wanted to try the beef this time. In my opinion, the pork us a lot better! I also got a sip of the Tom yum soup and it was greatly flavored. I would come here again and recommend it to other people.

Really good! We used to order from this place all the time at my job and I was always excited when we did. I’ve never eaten at the actual restaurant, but it must be even better when it’s not take out.
I usually always order the green curry. I love that you can pick how spicy you want it, and they don’t disappoint with the levels of spice! I once ordered the pad thai and it was pretty dry. I’m guessing that it’s because it was for delivery! Definitely worth a try!

Ordered the pad see ew. Was good but on the salty side. My friends ordered the green and southern curries which they gave ⁵⁄₅ for.
Check in for the free Thai tea!

Best Thai in LA? No way, people. I picked up pad thai from here the other day, right at opening time, and while it wasn’t quite the worst I’ve had, it was nowhere near the best.
My main problems with the pad thai were with the flavor. It wasn’t spicy at all and it was WAY too sweet. The grease level wasn’t awful, but combined with the overly sweet bright-​orange sauce, it was sickening. Less than halfway through, it had to go in the garbage — and I love pad thai!
Maybe their other items are good? But pad thai is kind of a standard. The portion size was slightly on the larger size, and for $ 15 I would have been content if it’d been any good. The hunt continues for great Thai food!

After our first not so great experience with this restaurant — super long delivery time and barely lukewarm food — we decided to give it another try. After reading my review the owner reached out to me, asking for us to give his restaurant another shot as they continue to work out some of the delivery kinks. I’m glad we tried it out again as the food is very good.
We decided not to chance delivery and ordered pick up. Everything we ordered was very good with the exception of the chicken lettuce cups. The chicken meat tasted like dark meat and there was no sauce to add on. Maybe my expectations were off but for me, I would not order those again.
Other than that the Panang Curry, Garlic Chicken and Crying Tiger beef were all very good. We ordered at a spice level 8 and it was perfectly spiced.

My friend likes Thai, actually, scratch that, he LOVES Thai food. So when we decided to eat dinner with a new friend in Westwood, he recommended a place that he previously brought a special lady friend to. The place is about a 15 minute walk from the UCLA campus, not too bad.
The ambiance of the place is very cozy with awesome decorations. Three of us sat at one of the intimate booths, so I understood why my friend brought his special lady friend here. The waiters were really nice and gave decent service.
I ordered the Green Curry and Jasmine Rice with chicken. The plate was surprisingly SMALL with mostly bamboo shoots and chicken. There was a meager amount of eggplant and bell peppers. The addition of green peas did not help the dish. The taste of the curry was OK, but the most UNFORGIVABLE part of the dinner was that they served me a RAW PIECE OF CHICKEN. Once I bit into the piece in question I felt that was super super soft and was definitely undercooked. I’ve eaten chicken for about two decades, and though I’m no expert at health codes I knew they served RAW CHICKEN and that RESTAURANTS CANNOT SERVE RAW CHICKEN. Luckily I didn’t get sick the day or week after, so I guess I can’t complain too much.
One of my friends ordered the Pad See Ew, but she didn’t have any real complaints. The friend that recommended this place got the Hot Mama Thai Noodles and to his SHOCK, they used INSTANT NOODLES. The dish had the exact same square shape of a instant noodle right out of its cozy cheap plastic package. I can’t believe a place of such seemingly high caliber could serve instant noodles.
I give it 2 stars since I didn’t get sick and the service was OK, but the food had huge BOO BOOS and it didn’t serve you a lot.
Bottom Line: RAW chicken and INSTANT RAMEN means I cannot recommend this place and I’m never coming back here again.

I took out from Emporium Thai. I thought they used high quality ingredients and the food was well prepared and good portions. I asked for a little bit of spice but I thought the food was a bit bland. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that it’s more of a healthy option.
I’ll give it a four star rating but I was tempted to go down to three stars. I’ll try it out one more time before I append or change my stars. Overall a good takeout experience and I’d try it again. A little costly compared to other Thai in the are but I’m happy to pay extra for quality.

I’ve both been here for dinner and had it delivered and this food is really great. I ordered from the new UberEats app yesterday. I hate how at Thai restaurants you really are guessing at how spicy they make their spice scale. I have ordered a 7 many places and found it to be just right – but let me tell you that I could not eat my meal yesterday it was so hot. I was actually getting shivers across my body with each bite and had to chug almond milk to get the taste out of my lungs and body. Bravo, Emporium Thai – you really mean your spice scale! 7 was way too hot for this girl who really really digs spicy food.
Pad Kee Mow is not found that often on menus, but this one was really en pointe (less being so spicy I couldn’t eat it). I do remember that the last time I went to the restaurant I got a beef curry that was amazing, so give that a go if you eat meat.

We were looking for a place in the Westwood area for dinner and stumbled upon this place. Upon walking in the place was packed with patrons but there was no hostess at the door nor a sign in sheet for us to sign. What gives? This was just the beginning of the service mayhem that ensured. Every single patron that entered seems to be confused as to go all the way up to the front counter or wait at the front door to be seated. After a good 10 minute wait someone finally came to greet us and take us to a table. Apparently the people waiting at the counter inside was for To-​Go orders. Anyway upon being seated we never got menu’s… another 5 minutes go by and we had to wave down the waitress for some menus. Eek not a good start to what’s been tagged as one of the Top 100 Thai Restaurants in the US. We were giving them the benefit of the doubt as they seemed to be extremely short staffed.
Note they have FREE thai tea if you check-​in on Unilocal!
The menu has a large variety of your classic Thai dishes including a whole page dedicated to the vegetarian and vegan patrons.
We started with the highly revered Crying Tiger Beef: Thai style chargrilled beef marinated with thai herbs, thinly sliced and served with homemade chili sauces. Seeing this item was featured on the Food Network as «the best thing i ever ate» we had some super high expectations for this appetizer. OMG it did NOT disappoint one bit! The flavor profile is out of this world with a texture like super moist beef jerkey served with a mild thai chili sauce and a HOT lemon chili sauce. You just could not stop eating this stuff as the flavors just exploded in your mouth with every mouth watering bite! Be careful with the lemon chili sauce if you don’t like spicy food because this stuff was HOT! The mild chili sauce has a good sweet and savor with just enough kick of heat to balance out the saltiness of the marinated beef. Overall ⁵⁄₅ Taste ⁵⁄₅
Entrée: Royal Veggie Pad Thai. This was one of the most interesting pad thai’s I’ve ever eaten. The sauce itself had a super strong sweet orange flavor to it instead of your traditional sweet tamarind sauce and palm sugar. As a vegetarian dish it had a pretty generous portion size for two people to share with a mixture of cabbage, broccoli, carrots, green onions and side of fresh bean sprouts and lime wedge. It was missing the usual chopped peanuts from your regular pad thai so it didn’t have that nice crunchy texture. Overall 3.5÷5 taste ³⁄₅
Tofu Tom Yum: This was just mushrooms with tofu in the tom yum broth. This tom yum did have a very fishy profile with a thick soup base instead of being more watery like many other thai places. The did have your usual sour flavor with very mild spiciness. Overall ³⁄₅ taste ³⁄₅
Dessert:
Thai Donut with coconut ice cream. This looks like a super popular dish here which i can see why. It’s pretty much 4 fried biscuit donuts served with a scoop of coconut ice cream drizzled with honey and topped with chopped peanuts. The fried donuts itself were just ok. It was literally just fried biscuit dough so it’s abit on the salty side by itself. The ice cream itself was pretty good with a fresh coconut cream and sweetness from the honey and crunch from the peanuts. Overall ⁴⁄₅ taste ⁴⁄₅
Overall the food here is pretty good and worth trying if you’re in the UCLA area. BUT the service here was atrocious! From the seating process, to simple menu delivery to taking orders and even paying for your check. Why does it take literally 10 minutes to swipe a credit card and get the check back? Luckily we weren’t in a rush but i’m sure the patrons waiting for a table weren’t too thrilled. The staff definitely needs to be better trained especially for a place getting so much publicity. Luckily the food itself is saving this place.

I haven’t in Thai food in months and Emporium Thai just reminded me how unacceptable that is. I think this was the home of my first check-​in on Unilocal.The first time we sat here, the owner came up and introduced himself. Months later when we came back, he recognized us and it really made a lasting impression. Today, a server came by and saw me scrolling through Unilocal.He asked if it was my first time and brought up that customers can check in for a free Thai tea that’s really very delicious and indulgent. I told him I already knew because Emporium Thai was most likely the reason I started a Unilocal account and probably my very first check-​in ever. So happy they still have this wonderful check-​in deal four years after my first dinner here.
I almost always order the shrimp pineapple curry which comes with a medium bowl of jasmine rice. The curry is very creamy and sweet. I love the taste of coconut milk in curry. There’s a lot of shrimp and thick pineapple chunks in there, along with a couple of bell pepper slivers and peas. One of the best things about their curry selection is that you can customize the spiciness to your preference. I’ve tried it at a few different chili pepper ‘levels’ and I stick to the mild side more — that way it’s more about the tangy sweet than the tingling spice. I usually dip the rice into the curry rather than pour it over the rice so I don’t waste a single delicious drop. If it wasn’t for everyone else around, I’d probably lick the damn plate…
But next time, I’ll order take-​out just so I can. Also because it’s hard to decide between rice and noodle, and nobody can stare at you for ordering both the shrimp pineapple curry and pad see ew. And of course, checking in for the free Thai tea!

Hidden in the open on Westwood by Wilshire is this unassuming restaurant.
With the many great reviews, I made a reservation and went in at 8:15pm. Service started off pretty good but felt a bit rushed in the beginning while placing our order.
We ordered an appetizer and three entrees which came out at 9pm and all at the same time except for one entrée which was almost another 7 mins later than rest of the table. Waters weren’t filled, had to ask ten times if my food was gluten free and had to ask for refills twice. Service lacks quite a bit. We put in dessert order as soon as we got the entrees in fear of how long it took with getting our food. For Thai donuts it was almost another 40 mins before I told the waitress that I want to cancel the donuts for her to bring them out.
They seemed more interested in getting their take out orders ready and on point than the customers that were in the restaurant seated.
Food — delicious and def on the better side of the Thai food I’ve had in town. Was great that they had an extensive vegan vegetarian menu that you can order from and most things can be made gluten free. Large portions.
Pad Thai — fan favorite with a spicy kick but sweet.
Pad see ew — noodles were great but the meat was thick and dry and lacked flavor and was chewy.
Thai basil tofu — was great and had a lot of flavor and one of my favorite dishes
Thai donuts — soft, flakey, perfect with a side of amazing peanut and condensed milk dipping sauce that the table shared.
Overall — I would order out from this place because they care more about their Togo orders but def would not eat in again.

My colleagues and I were craving a Thai food dinner late one night. We ordered a pad see ewe, pad woonsen, crying tiger beef and tofu satay. The entire meal was terrible from beginning to end.
Tofu satay– Tofu was sour. Is tofu supposed to be sour? I don’t know.
Pad woonsen– The noodles were overcooked. The entire dish looked like a soggy mess. We sent it back. When it came back the second time, the noodles were cooked right but the whole dish smelled funny. Turned out the mussels they used were rotten. The entire dish smelled like rotting ammonia. I wanted to throw up.
Pad see ewe– Noodles were overcooked and the entire dish was far too salty.
Crying tiger beef– Decent but nothing special.
The only saving grace for this place was that everyone at our table got a free Thai iced tea for coming. However, the quality of the food was unforgivable, especially because they served me rotten seafood. I will never come here again and neither should you!
There are plenty of Thai restaurants in the Los Angeles area. In fact, there are 3 other Thai restaurants on Westwood Blvd just down the street from this place. If you are in the mood for Thai, do NOT come here!

TASTE BUDS COULDN’T TAKE ANYMORE!!!
BACKGROUND:
Southern Thai Specialty Restaurant established in 2000, conveniently located near UCLA in Westwood, California. Restaurant was ranked as one of the Top 100 Best Thai Restaurants in the USA. Indulge and experience our delectable cuisine at affordable prices. We proudly offer our guests an outstanding selection of delicious, authentic Thai dishes, prepared with fresh natural ingredients, exotic native spices and fresh herbs for your dining pleasure.
STATS:
Monday — Thursday 11:00 a.m. — 10:30 p.m.
Friday — Saturday 11:00 a.m. — 11:00 p.m.
Sunday 5:00 p.m. — 10:30 p.m.
Online Reservations & Ordering available
Catering available
Metered Street Parking
BIG SHOUT OUT TO FELLOW UnilocalER WHO TOOK THE MANY HOURS IT TAKES TO PUT A PYE TOGETHER! MUCH APPRECIATED!!!
EXPERIENCE:
Fellow Unilocaler had a Private Unilocal Event (PYE) here one eve, for about 10 fellow Unilocalers. Not really a fan of this part of the Westside; too much traffreak, zero to no free parking, and to get there means up and over the infamous 405 freeway. SHIVER! Anywhoo, meeting Unilocaler’s/people in general won the line of reasoning in this treatment. The stars must have been aligned, no issues on the 405, PHEW!!! And I must have done something right, I scored parking right out front where the meters stop at 7 p.m.
Owner, John Sungkamee, was very personable and staff welcoming and very accommodating to our large group. All the hot eats, were served hot and all the cold eats cold.
Our drink orders were taken and quickly delivered, as well as a plethora of food. Good golly!!! The food just kept coming and coming and coming. After a few appetizers were devoured, it became apparent that it was every person for themselves and curiosity didn’t exist. The food was so well prepared and full of just the right about of seasoning to make everything flavorful to nearly perfection. I trust there were long moments of silence, not for any other reason, except Unilocaler’s mouths be full of savory Thai cuisine.
So, what was on the table, for only moments?
Appetizers included:
Soups:
Tom Yum Pak with Vegetables– Thai spicy lemongrass soup with mushrooms and veggies. Soup gently woke up our taste buds and warmed our tummy’s.
Spicy Mussel soup-​prepared to nearly perfection and served steaming hot and with the right ratio of water to add-​ins, of New Zealand green lip mussels in a lemongrass broth, dried chilly, and basil.
Coco Mango Salad with Shrimp-​a gentle toss of shredded raw mango mixed with red onion, crushed peanuts, dried coconut, sweet chile, lime juice, shrimp topped with peanuts was served chilled and fresh.
Crying Tiger Beef –Thai-​style chargrilled beef marinated with Thai herbs, served with homemade chili sauce. Serve on chilled lettuce leaves, the beef was cut thin, even held the flavors of the herbs and grill nicely.
Crab Curry-​Served on a deviled egg platter, these cute little scoops of crab chunks, basil leaves, were nicely blanketed with a flavorful curry paste.
Entrees included:
Southern Curry Chicken– one of our gluten free dishes, derived from their family’s 30 year– old recipe, it was packed full of chunks of chicken, red bell pepper, and basil. Like the Spicy Muscle Soup, the ratio of liquid and add-​ins were nearly perfect.
Spicy Seafood Fried Rice– another gluten free dish was chock-​full of all kinds of seafood; shrimp, scallops, fish fillet, calamari, and mussels, as well as cucumber, red bell pepper, peas, carrots, and onion. I’m not a big fan of fried rice, but let me tell you, it was so yummilicious I couldn’t get enough.
Spicy Eggplant-​Sautéed eggplant stir fried with Thai basil, garlic, onions, and spicy sauce, another gluten free dish that kept my taste buds doing the happy dance, eats with garlic do.
Pad See Ew with Beef-​yes, gluten free pan-​fried flat rice noodles with Chinese broccoli, and scrambled egg. If you like your noodles overly oiled, and your eggs dry and overcooked, or runny and undercooked, you won’t get that here. Nearly perfect balance of ingredients and flavors all around in this dish. We also indulged in some Pad See Ew which I preferred, only because I prefer shrimp over beef.
Dessert included:
Mango with Sweet Sticky Rice-​a perfectly ripened mango laid oh so gently on top of a mound of sweet rice.
Thai Donuts with Ice Cream-​a bite size way to end a tasty meal with outstanding people.
If ever on the Westside and in need of waking up the taste buds with some outrageously yummy eats, I’d definitely come back.