Diamond Thai

I love Thai food, and this place is great! It’s a cute little food cart with a lovely owner. I ordered the Spicy Curry Noodles and it was best thai food I have had, other than what I ate in Thailand itself. It’s authentic, spicy with a good amount of flavor. The size portions are surprisingly big for a food cart, so go when you’re hungry. It has very affordable prices that make it even more great. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is just looking for some good food with an empty tummy. Love it!

Your standard Thai food cart, now located just south of Stark on MLK. Had some communication issues with the host, whose English is not very good. Asked for no spicy, gave me spicy. The noodles of my phat Kee mao were overcooked, and the spiciness dominated the flavor. Pretty disappointed. That’s what one gets for $ 5.75. Next time I’ll spend the extra 25c and walk 10 feet to Sila Thai.

I picked up a curry from this cart and was blown away with the freshness of their ingredients. It had better mango in it than I’ve seen at sit down restaurants all over Portland! And let me take a second to tell you about the Crab Rangoon — usually when I get Crab Rangoon they’re completely drenched in oil. These Rangoons were so well prepared that the dough on them was still lightly colored but not undercooked at all. I was blown away! Friendly staff, amazing food, totally surprised. I highly recommend them!

This is a couple steps up from the Let’s Eat Thai Food cart located at the South Waterfront but I won’t be bookmarking this for another visit any time soon.
I ordered the pad kee mao (what’s new, right?) & there was way too much fish sauce used when making this. I tried to balance it out with sriracha but it was still greatly noticeable. Speaking of sriracha there isn’t a spicy scale option here. There were whole jalapeños sliced lengthwise in the dish but it didn’t taste very spicy to me. Then again I practically drink sriracha.
What shocked me the most was the portion size; the container of food had to have weighed two pounds. The veggies to noodles ratio was unbalanced but since I enjoy my veggies I was okay with the proportion. The price wasn’t too shabby either. $ 5.75 for a meal that ended up being two meals for me.
Though we arrived just before closing the service was attentive, friendly, & quick to prepare. There is a covered, heated seating area in the middle of all the pods so you don’t have to eat in the rain &/​or cold. The heat wasn’t on during our visit but thankfully it wasn’t too cold out at the time. A shared parking lot is open right next to the food court which is great since nearby street parking was occupied for our visit.

I was on a mission to try to find dinner for around $ 7. Carts seemed like the way to go so I headed back to the Green Castle Food Court to see what I could come up with.
I knew there was a Thai cart. There are Thai carts all over this city. You know with Thai that you will get a good amount of food and the price will be pretty cheap. Doesn’t seem that anything on this menu will cost you more than $ 6.
I was torn between a few choices so I asked the woman who took my order and subsequently cooked my food. Ended up with Pork Yakisoba (choice of chicken, pork, beef or tofu for $ 5.75, shrimp for $ 6). Yakisoba noodles, yellow onions, cabbage, broccoli and cabbage stir fried in a house special sauce.
The meal was good. Not great, but just fine on this day. The heat seemed to remain throughout my eating of it. Heat hot, not heat spicy. No spice at all. I wasn’t even asked if I wanted it spicy. I would have taken it spicy, but I wasn’t overly upset about it not being spicy. I also had a Thai Iced Tea ($ 1.50) because I love that on a nice sunny and warm night.
No different from any of the other Thai carts in town, but that might not necessarily be a bad thing. Consistent. Inexpensive. What else do you want?

I may not be a big noodle fan, but I’m a sucker for curries. This time, the mango curry with chicken ($ 5.75) called my name. Bamboo shoots, bell peppers, mango chunks, and basil leaves joined the sliced chicken in this one. A small container of rice accompanied my generous portion of curry. It’s advertised as a green curry, but it appeared to take on pinkish hues. It’s probably from ordering it spicy — because you know I went there. I also saw some sliced chiles in there, either jalapenos or large serranos.
A delicious Thai curry. The coconut milk slightly thickened the curry a bit more for that comforting creamy texture. The mango was not overly ripe, possessing a tangy-​sweet hybrid sensation. An abundance of the fruit made for a pleasant sight… it’s a mango curry, after all. The bamboo shoots were cooked well, and the peppers still had some crunchiness to them. The menu mentioned this curry had cashew nuts, but I didn’t see any in my helping.
I mentioned above that I requested my curry spicy. While I saw some red chili pepper flakes floating in there, I don’t think it would have sent the average person running for the water fountain. Without breaking a sweat, I demolished the curry in under eight minutes.
You can get pork, beef, tofu, or shrimp (shrimp costing 25 cents more) instead of chicken. I don’t think you can go wrong with any choice. Check out Diamond Thai today!

A study in contrasts, partaking of these spicy victuals v. the behemoth portions @ Rock House Grill Cart.
To once again completely mangle a metaphor… Whereas the cuddly gent @ Rock House uses a chainsaw for his origami, the lady @ Diamond Thai uses her finest point, bad ass doily needles. Whereas the the Rock House Grill create their culinary delights like a man possessed, carving ice blocks w/​said chainsaw («How on earth did he make THAT, with THAT»??), olé girl creates a frenzy of soups and noodles and bad-​ass spicery of much variety— thai chilis, the obligatory ginger root and bamboo shoots and scallions and other greenery. Oh! I do like this woman’s soups– both with and without the coconut milk. Some Thai places take it way too easy on Yankees, as though they are thinking «He can’t possibly, *really* mean, 5 star spicy hot, can he?»… Oh this lady was meticulous, she was thorough — - that soup was so incredible and so spicy –hot, it actually WARPED the plastic tubs they come in!!! Now THAT is what the heck I’m talkin’ about, right there!
Win!
However, and this is a definite first in my long career of enjoying Americanized Thai— I counted one — ONE!— jumbo shrimp in the entire tub of non-​coconut milk soup. One shrimp! That can’t possibly be the norm for Diamond Thai, can it? whether it is or not, sorry, that sort of parsimony is gonna effect your rating. The irony is, if I’d have ordered the soup as vegetarian, it would have been perfect, 5 stars, and I wouldn’t have minded the lone shrimp finding its way in there. But alas. The devil’s in the details, so they say, and so this is a perfect case in point. Maybe it’s at least in part a function of my westerner ethnocentric bias— if I have to choose between Mr. over-​the-​top Piledriver, and little miss prim and stingy, I’ll take the pile-​driver, for better or worse, almost every time. one wonders what kind of masterful origami those two could make, if paired as a team…

An excellent value for the food quantity provided. The shrimp wrap appetizer was $ 3 and my phad kee ew was $ 5.75.
The appetizer came with five hefty-​sized shrimp wrapped in a delicate crispy wrap. While seasoned nicely, the wraps would have been even better if they had come with a dipping sauce.
The seasonings in the phad kee ew were also very good. The crinkle-​cut carrot and broccoli were cooked to perfection. Unfortunately, the phad kee ew was dry, completely lacking any sauce. Also the proportion of noodles to the other components of the dish was excessive.