Tantawan Thai Kitchen

I called in for a Togo order, I told him my number and name and my order, waited for 25 minutes and find out that my order wasn’t even put in and they said are you sure you called this number. This is ridiculous. I was on my lunch. No I don’t have time for you to put it in now and wait another 25 minutes.

I didn’t even step into this place and they already turned us away. The place closes at 10pm and we walked in at 9:30pm and they said they can’t serve us because it’s too late. Disappointed.

Loved the Thai Papaya salad even though the medium spicy is super duper spicy. I never sat in but had delivery service several times. A bit pricey for this area here, borderline Rosemead and South El Monte. Will order again for their quick and efficient delivery service.

This is as legit as it gets. Tantawan Thai Kitchen is food like I remember it from my childhood.
Chicken larb — Perfect minced chicken. Moist, well balanced. I prefer mine more acidic so I asked for more lime. (Most my aunties don’t like it too limey so this would be perfect for them.) Good amount of dry roast powder. This is the best version I’ve ever had in a restaurant.
Pad See Ew — Not as excellent as Thailand but this is as close as you can get. Not oily, nicely salted, char all over your face. There was char on the meat and tofu. I usually don’t order beef with pad see ew because people tend to cook it tough or chewy. The meat was perfect! Nice char around the edges, tender, well-​seasoned. I like how there’s no odd ingredient like bean sprouts in this version. I didn’t need to change a thing! It comes not spicy which is perfect for my toddler. This pad see ew is my favorite version in LA as well.
Yum Nua — Beef salad with mint and red onions. This is the best version I’ve ever had in LA! The meat is incredibly smokey and charred. Its super spicy and sour and sooooo sooo tasty. When I have it at other places I’m sad that I’m not at Tantawan.
Crab Fried Rice — I’ve never had this before but I’m pretty sure this has got to be the most delicious version. Not much crab but it’s enough to just scent the rice with crabby-​ness. It’s topped with crab scrambled egg. It’s so delicious. The rice was plump and dry and separate. I love this was the pickled jalapenos and chili powder.
Papaya Salad — Really good. I asked for spicy but got bland. Or maybe they accidentally brought it out not spicy. You don’t need to mix it up. It doesn’t look like there’s much seasoning on it but there is. It’s sour and salty. Pretty tasty, pretty standard. Light and clean.
Pad Thai — I shouldn’t have ordered this. Everyone’s version of pad thai is different. This particular one was soupy, sweet and sour. It was a lot like the dipping sauce they put on sweet and sour chicken at chinese restaurants. Imagine that sauce poured over some glass noodles. It was too sweet for me. Not well balanced. Would not order again.
Chicken Chow Mein — Not thai but someone else at the table ordered it. (Seriously…you’re at a thai restaurant). It was still very good. Nicely seasoned. Veggies were crisp. Great dish for kids.
Tantawan Fresh Rolls — This is wonderful. It’s like a salad but in a spring roll! They’re huge! Size of my forearm. You could cut each roll in half and it would still be pretty nice appetizer for a person. There was spinach, basil, other vegs and a sliver of avocado. I like this because avocados should be eaten in moderation anyways. The dipping sauce was like those sweet thai chili bottled sauce. It was spicy, sour, sweet. I wish they had a peanut sauce to go with this as well. Definitely a favorite. I’ll order it every time.
Green milk drink — Green pandan syrup with whole milk. Good. Tastes like a thai dessert we eat called nam van.
From the Unilocal reviews it seems like their soups aren’t what you want to order. Get the stir fried dishes or salads.
Service was great. Someone was standing at attention the whole time we were eating just like in Asia! Really nice service.
Plenty of parking. Cash or credit.
I love this restaurant. I’ll be back to try more items on the menu. My mouth is watering just thinking about their food!

This used to be my favorite Thai place until tonight. We ordered pad see ew, tom yum soup and mango sticky rice of course. We asked for one bowl of rice to go with the tom yum soup and they charged $ 2 for the plain rice. Are you serious!!! $ 2 for a plain bowl of rice? I was shocked when they actually charge you for white rice… I would be ok paying for $ 1 but they doubled the price. $ 2 is not a big deal at all but for a small bowl of white rice it is!
We asked them to bring in the mango sticky rice after we finished the food so it will be fresh. They brought it out so soon… So it was just sitting there until we finished the main entrees. By the time we start eating the dessert it was already cold and it was overly sweet today. Normally they makes it really good, but not today.
I would give 4 stars for the food but 3 stars for the service and restaurant overall.

Went with my vegan friend (I am vegan as well) and they were very accommodating. When the server noticed we were not ordering anything with egg, she also mentioned that the clam sauce and other things would be removed from our order. We thanked her for that.
Their fried tofu is great and their spicy dishes are spicy and good.
I’d totally go back.

Not bad! I got the Pad Thai for only $ 8! Now i just need a Thai girl friend
Swadeeekkaaa

First time coming here and wow, some of the best thai food I’ve ever eaten!
Recommend:
Pad Thai w/​Chicken
–One of the BEST pad thais I’ve ever had
–Delicious, great flavor
–Noodles are fresh, delicate, cooked to perfection
–Chicken is tender, not dry
Crispy Pork Belly
–Crispy, flavorful, almost melts in your mouth
–Not chewy or overly fatty at all
–Served with Chinese broccoli in a rich, savory sauce
Pineapple Fried Rice
–If you like P.F.R. it’s good
–subtle sweet, hint of sourness
–Nice mix of flavors subtle herbs and spices
Yes, I’ve only been here once but I’ll definitely be back!
The service here is good but it sort of bugs me how close to «greatness» it could be. They are all super friendly and helpful and they were on it with the refills. After I finished my thai iced tea (which is amazing), they brought me out some water right away. My only issues with the service, and seriously, this is just nitpicking, they didn’t pack up our food for us at the end of the meal. Maybe I’m spoiled but when I was a server way back when I’d always offer to pack leftovers up as a courtesy. In their defense I’ve noticed most Chinese people like packing up their own food, and this is in a Chinese area so it’s possible they used to offer but got turned down so many times, they just stopped asking.
My second issue with this place is the bathroom. The toilet didn’t flush and the automatic paper towel dispenser wasn’t working. Major fail in my book! Lastly, they didn’t thank us as we left. Again, I might be spoiled, but with a few minor corrections, the service here could be stellar!
The food though, is amazing! Everything I ordered was delicious!
As for parking, the lot is crazy busy due to many restaurants in the plaza but there are designated spots for this restaurant right out front. Use them!

This restaurant is located on the corner of Garvey and River in a plaza. The inside has a good amount of seating. The 3 of us were seated along side the window. We ordered pad woon sen (stir fry clear rice noodles), pad thai, and rad na. I felt that the stir fry rice noodles were quite small in terms of portions compared to the other 2 entrees. The rice noodles were tasty with an abundance of onions. However, it was quite greasy. The pad thai was just ok, the orange oil/​sauce kind of dripped off the noodles. The rad na came in a thick watery sauce, this entrée was not oily, but it is more soup-​like.
All the items were tasty in terms of flavor and they did NOT skimp on ingredients. I just wished the food wasn’t so oily. Ambiance was great. We were able to have great conversation with lots of privacy since the restaurant wasn’t packed and we had the back corner to ourselves.
Service was really good. Different staff members came by every so often to check if we needed refills. They left us alone and didn’t mind us sitting so long. Pricing is competitive compared to other Thai restaurants in the area.

Food got to us quickly for a big party of six. Came in here for dinner after driving eight hours back from Las Vegas. We were hungry for sure and this was open since we called before hand to see if there was any wait or if it was busy. When we arrived there were a few tables but yeah it wasn’t packed maybe because it was a Sunday night.
Each dish tasted pretty good it wasn’t overly salty or too spicy. The plates are big and super sharable so each of us decided to order something that was our favourite in Thai dishes. If anything I would say I enjoy the most is the Tom Yum soup because it is a tad bit on the semi spicy side but you can always order it with less spice!
Noodles are also my second favourite in Thai dishes. If you want to get a full flavour of what Thai dishes are I would suggest getting noodle dishes. Also order it with beef meat to add more flavour to the noodles. Tons of parking and in a small plaza so you also don’t have to worry about that part.
If you aren’t into spicy food they also have things that are not so you don’t have to worry about that when you go to Thai places. Not everything on the menu is catered to spicy flavour.

Came here the other day with the the Tiff. She was raving about this place while I kept silent judgment. You guys know how that is!
The restaurant is located in a large Asian plaza in Rosemead. The restaurant itself has a fairly casual ambiance with some décor. We came on a week night so there was one other family eating in the establishment but the facility can probably house ~100 guests.
We decided to keep it simple and order the Tom Yum Ga (Chicken) which is a Thai-​style hot and sour soup. The other dish we order was the beef Pad See Ew, your essential Chinese-​influenced Thai-​popularized fried noodles with soy sauce.
After a brief wait, the food came. Now if you haven’t been to Thai restaurants before, dishes are prepare family style with the intent and purpose of the items to be shared among the party. In that avenue, the portions are generous and the general count for serving a party would be 1 dish per member (+1 more dish if you are feeling hungry).
The Pad see ew was quite incredible and I can probably count it on my top 5 fried noodle dishes which is quite high praise. Very flavorful and tasty; reminisce of street style pad see ew you may encounter on the streets on Bangkok. [8.3/10]
The tom yum on the other hand started out REALLY bland. It had none of the sour element in the soup which makes me think they forgot the base entirely. After trying to flag down a waiter (more details in a bit), we explain the problem and he took it back. It came back and after a second tasting, it tasted much better but I thought it was still below average with heavy accent of lemongrass trying to mask all of the flavor. It was a cold night but still didn’t satisfy me. I probably would not order again. [3.4/10]
The service was so-​so with us taking awhile to flag down the waiter whether it was if we wanted to order something or if we wanted to remark about the before mentioned soup. Very peculiar too since there was only one other party in the restaurant besides us. [ 4.5/10]
TLDR: All in all, I would come back here for there pad see ew (and maybe try their other dishes) but would probably avoid the rest.
Food: [5.9/10]

Tantawan Thai Kitchen is a Thai restaurant located in a large plaza surrounded by Vietnamese restaurants. Tantawan means sunflower in Thai. I guess they wanted to change it up considering there are lots of Thai places that like using orchid or jasmine in their restaurant name.
Their menu has over 100 Thai dishes including starters, salads, noodle dishes, rice dishes, curries, soups, and special entrees. They do have lunch specials although it’s a limited selection. But then again, I’m not too concerned with lunch specials anyway.
Some of the dishes I’ve tried here:
*Yellow Curry with Chicken — Chicken, potatoes, and onions in yellow coconut curry. The yellow curry portion was a bit outrageous. I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere that gave so much curry that it looked like a bowl of soup. There were lots of chicken and potatoes in there but they were chopped up pretty small. The curry flavor was light, a little spicy with a little bit of coconut flavor.
*Papaya Salad with Blue Crab — Green papaya with tomatoes, green string bean, and dried shrimp. The portion of the papaya salad was quite grand. Seriously, that’s like two papaya salad orders combined into one. I’ve never been to any Thai restaurant that gave that much of a portion. The papaya was nicely shredded into large, smooth pieces.
*Thai Papaya Salad — Green papaya with tomatoes, dried shrimp, and peanuts. Like the papaya salad with blue crab, this was also a super large portion. Nicely shredded into large smooth pieces. This was sweet, sour, and spicy embedded with flavor of peanuts. Had to be the best Thai papaya salad I’ve ever had. I didn’t have to stir anything as the flavor was already absorbed.
*Panang Curry with Beef — Beef in coconut curry chili sauce. The beef was quite tender. There were lots of beef in that curry. Very rich curry and coconut flavor.
*Pork Satay — Grilled pork served with cucumber sauce and peanut sauce. It almost tasted like curry grilled pork which isn’t how pork satay is supposed to taste. I wouldn’t order this again.
*Crab Fried Rice — Fried rice with crab meat, onions, scallions, and eggs. Great texture of the fried rice and the ingredients made the fried rice flavorful.
*Tantawan BBQ Chicken — Charred marinated chicken served with sweet chili sauce. The skin was quite flavorful and the chicken meat was super tender. Pretty good portions of the chicken. Went well with the sweet chili sauce.
*Rad Na with Pork — Stir-​fried large rice noodles and Chinese broccoli in gravy sauce. The noodles were stir-​fried to perfection. The gravy sauce wasn’t too thick. The noodle portion was rather plentiful. The pork was a bit chewy but still edible.
*Pineapple Fried Rice — WOW! Seriously this is the best pineapple fried rice I’ve had thus far. The rice texture, the portion, the curry flavor, the flavors were just really robust.
*Chicken Pad Kra Pow — Stir-​fried chicken with sweet basil, fresh chili, and bell peppers. Had to be the best chicken kra pow dish I’ve had. Perfectly stir-​fried which brought out rich flavors also with a slight hint of basil flavor. I requested mild spicy so there was a bit of a kick to it.
*Grilled BBQ Pork — The grilled pork really didn’t look like how it’s normally supposed to look. It was really sweet and the pork was a bit chewy. I wouldn’t order this again.
*Tom Lurd Moo — Minced pork with pork blood cubes and scallions in a clear broth. The pork blood cubes were really good and the clear broth ran down smooth.
*Yen Ta Fo — Generous portions of everything. The taste of fermented soybean paste was strong in the broth. This noodle soup was fantastic!
I’ve also had steamed white rice with some of the dishes specifically the curries and the chicken pad kra pow. The rice texture was pretty soft which was good. For the BBQ Chicken, I ordered a side of sticky rice. The sticky rice was super soft and was easily shaped without sticking to my fingers.
Service has been decent. Food arrives promptly not too long after we order. For all other requests, we would have to flag servers but at least they got what we needed and were quite friendly. Servers will tend to stand by the counter scanning the room for raised hands. I guess that’s just how the service is here.
The restaurant is quite large and and spacious. There are lots of tables and they’re spaced far from each other. The A/​C worked well. The music here consists of modern Thai pop and US pop hits. It seems it’s usually always crowded here. The crowd usually consists of business people, families, couples, and groups of people. I’ve never had a chance to take a picture of the seating as I don’t like getting people in my restaurant photos.
Overall, most of the Thai dishes I had were excellent. Those dishes definitely left me with an impression that I need to come back. As a result, this restaurant is quickly becoming one of my favorite Thai restaurants. There’s still a lot more I haven’t tried so will be back for more!

A friend introduced me to Tantawan Thai Kitchen, and I’ve been coming back ever since. Big portions of pretty good Thai food at reasonable prices, and so glad I got introduced to Tantawan.
What has become my favorite dishes at Tantawan include the Chicken Padseew, Green Curry, Pad Thai, Catfish with Chili Sauce, Sauteed Morning Glory (Ong Choi) and Crunchy Tofu. All of these dishes are delicious and flavorful. Also, most dishes are around $ 8 to $ 9. Pretty good deal for a good amount of food. Menu is pretty extensive and has so many other dishes I haven’t tried. Maybe at my next visit. Also, lunch specials ($ 6.95) are available, but wishing there were choices. Have never tried any of the lunch specials since there are only 7 choices that come with rice and choice of crispy noodle or salad. Would rather share two to three entrees family style.
Staff is friendly and welcoming at Tantawan. On one visit, I came to Tantawan with two coworkers. Since we only had 50 minutes for lunch, we actually ordered over the phone, and our food was already waiting for us as soon as stepped inside. I do wish however that the staff checked up on us a little bit more near the end of the meal. On two occasions, I found the staff not checking up on us as soon as the food they served at the table. You definitely have to flag down a waiter or waitress just to get a drink refill or to get the bill.

Bummer.
They’ve removed my review.
I’m a regular here as this is pretty close to my house.
For the quality and taste, this is definitely a gem in this part of town. Legitimate Thai food. With it’s modest look and casual environment, one can enjoy good quality Thai food without needing to help pay for their décor.
Personal favorites:
Tay Jew noodle
Definitely a place I frequent several times a month.

I always get my Thai food either from Noodle World or Thai Paradise. However, on this day, I decided I needed a change and I was CRAVING some tom yum soup… I fortunately stumbled across this gem of a place.
Environment — this restaurant has a very large eating area — «open-​compcept» as HGTV might put it. Plenty of seating for my party of two for lunch on this weekend. It was crowded at all and weas seated immediately. It unfortunately is located in a non-​so-​crowded strip mall. but it is right in front of the mall, in a corner.
Service — the service was really good provided that there were only 5 tables while I was eating. The servers were really nice and attentive; I didn’t have to wait long to order nor did I have to wait long for my food to arrive. They always smiled and kindly greeted everyone who entered/​exit through the double doors.
Food —
1) Tom Yum Noodle Soup (medium spicy).- ohmygosh, this was DELICIOUS. I think this rating might be super biased but dude, it was really good. The first few bites were mouth-​watering and the medium spicy with fat noodle was just perfect — it didn’t make me sweat nor lose taste. lol. However, it didn’t taste so good. but it was good overall. The only complaint that I have about this dish is that the seafood/​fish ball was really really seafood-​y… I had a hard time eating the couple of them floating in there.
2) Pad See You — I got this with beef. This dish is how I compare how good a thai food place is because you cannot be a great Thai restaurant if you cannot get something liek pad see you to be perfect… this dish was a little bit on the sweeter side. But nonetheless, it delivered and tasted great! Side note, it tasted good two days later when I reheated it and ate it for lunch haha
3) Thai Tea — yum… you should try it.
Overall, I think this is a really good thai place for its location. I would definitely come here again on any given day that I am craving thai. But this time, I would probably get another noodle soup dish. I’m drooling as I am typing this bahaha — embarassing.

Had a Thai craving and came back for some quick take out.
Pad Thai and Pad See You were the same as last time and priced the same.
Beef Boat Noodle — $ 6.95 — Very beefy broth. Tender beef. Thick flat noodle. Would have liked some veggies but overall it was a great beef noodle soup.

Came here on a Monday afternoon with my friends for lunch and there were a good amount of people. The workers here are really nice and friendly, and the food came out at a good time.
Tom yum soup: This was pretty good, but I didn’t like how they put canned mushrooms. I wish they put fresh ones instead. They put a gang of chicken in it though, which was good for my friends because they ate all of it.
Surf n turf fried rice: I liked the texture and the taste of the rice, but I didn’t eat any of the meat so I can’t judge this dish that well. They had a lot of meat in there, so it’s obvious that they’re very generous when it comes to that.
Flaming drunken noodle: This dish was also yummy. I was expecting it to be super spicy but it wasn’t. I told them to add extra egg and basil in it because I loveeee those things, so I thought it was delicious. It’s the same type of noodles that they put in pad see ew, but the taste is completely different.
Mango sticky rice: No Bueno! The rice was soooooo sweet. I’ve probably never had anything so sweet before in my life. I normally have the biggest sweet tooth, but their rice was so sweet that it felt like I had to throw up. The mango was yummy though.

Thought this place was good based on Unilocal reviews, so decided to try for lunch. Verdict: Don’t trust everything you see.
Papaya Salad with Raw Blue Crab: I think this was the worse dish out of all the ones we ordered. The salad was hard to chew. Crab was flavorful, but you have to bite through the shell in order to get to the meat.
Curries: Both were really good. The green curry was not as flavorful as the other one, but still decent.
Pad Thai: Can never go wrong with pad thai. But I’ve had better ones.
Environment: Clean and pretty nice.
Would I come back? Probably not. Nice try though.

Very late review but better than none! Sudden craving for Thai but didn’t want to go to the usual places cause I wanted to try a new Thai place.
Found this place had some good reviews so we decided to try it. It was super empty — besides about three other tables — though given that it was 3 – 3:30pm so not really lunch or dinner time when we came.
The service was great perhaps it wasn’t busy or perhaps our waitress was just super sweet and friendly and I like to think it’s the the latter.
I ordered a very delicious bowl of Coconut Curry Beef Noodle soup and my boyfriend being brave ordered the Spicy Pad See Ew. It was very spicy indeed and I applaud him for being able to finish it cause I took one bite and cried but hey perfect for spicy-​lovers. My soup noodles on the other hand was not very spicy — just very mild — which is the way I like it. The broth was very rich and full of flavors and the beef was very tender. Thinking about it now makes me very much want to have it again.
Their menu is very extensive as well — they had a lot of tasty sounding dishes that I would like to come back to try again. The Thai Iced Tea was creamy, smooth and not overwhelmingly sweet so that’s a good drink to order.
Overall really liked this place and will definitely come back for more tasty food — a new good Thai food place to add to my list.

ADDING TO MY LIST OF FAVES:
YUM WOON SEN: glass noodle salad with shrimp, ground pork, asian meat loaf (cha), chilis, fish sauce/​lime dressing. i ordered this in medium and my mouth was ON FIRE. I’m going for mild next time, thai people spicy is nothing to f with. but this was so delicious! light, but not short of flavor what so ever.
CRISPY PUFFY CATFISH:
I’ve looked up recipes for this and can not figure out how the HELL they do it.
it just tastes so good! If you like fried skins, you will LOVE this. I personally don’t like the thought of eating pork, so having this magically fried fish concoction is like. **haaaaaaaaalleeelujaaah** & the spicy slaw they serve it with, UGH. too good.
My taste buds seriously wanted to jump out of my mouth, and start doing the wave on the table. I wish i had a party tray of this to myself.