Nipa Pon

Well, this place is not closed, but probably should be.
We ordered Pad Thai, soup, and a pork dish with eggplant.
Nothing was particularly good, nor fresh. Everything was too salty.
The pad thai had little taste, and consisted mostly of noodles with a bland sauce.
The pork was dry, though the eggplant was ok, though again, too salty.
look elsewhere

Great Thai Iced Tea, good portions, great service, good prices. I should give this a 5, but it was a ghost town. It’s a little strange to walk into an empty restaurant during lunch time.

Not the best Thai food I’ve tried. Nipa Pon is really close to my house so I’ve given them a few tries always getting different dishes. I’ve done take out and the take out is pretty quick, but the food isn’t worth the money.
The papaya salad is mostly just spicy like dressing and tasteless of anything else. The papayas weren’t fresh and was lacking some peanuts.
Pad Thai is mediocre. Dry and too sweet. Needed more bean sprouts and peanut sauce.
Satay chicken was nothing special. Kinda dry as well.
Thai tea was very good and not bitter like most Thai teas are. I really liked it.
The calamari fritters are still pretty good. Probably their signature thing.

Food was mediocre quality. We had dinner — ordered vegetarian food — soup, papaya salad, yellow curry with brown rice and thai tea.
It is pricey for the quality and portions of the food provided.
Service was good.
There are better Thai restaurants in San Mateo. Will not go there again!

We were in the mood for some Thai and Sweet Basil in Foster City came up but would’ve been too crowded on a Friday. So we settled for the next best option at Nipa-​Pon.
Our instincts were right as it wasn’t too crowded and we got our table in a flash. I ordered the Rad Na but a few minutes later, the waitress came back with bad news in that they out of the thick flat rice noodles used in Rad Na. Bummer. Next best choice is Pad Thai. I don’t usually order Pad Thai since they tend to be cooked with too much sugar and also gets mushy.
Surprise again as the Pad Thai was nicely done. Not overly mushy or greasy or too sweet. Right balance of crunchy bean sprouts and nutty Cilantro. Noodles were done to the right firmness. Mushiness in Pad Thai is an absolute no-​no for me and Nipa-​Pon did it right.
Service was good although slightly slow. I’ll be back to try more stuff for sure.

Revising my review because of a horrible experience I had with the owner. I will NOT come back ever again!
I ordered to go, and upon going home, discovered melted styrofoam in my food.
I proceeded to call the restaurant and politely told the waitress about what had happened. The waitress was nice, and did the right thing in apologizing and offering a replacement. No harm, no foul at this point, but what happened next was certainly unexpected. The Restaurant’s owner/​chef called me back, and proceeded to yell at me and say things like, «You did not tell the waitress to tell me to add a aluminum foil layer to the container.» «You have to tell next time; otherwise, we will NOT do it for you.» Okay, fair enough once again, because I normally remind restaurants who use styrofoam to do this anyway. However the next statement really got to me. I told the owner that regardless, ingesting melted styrofoam is a health hazard and that more care should be taken. She proceeds to scream at me saying «Nobody cares! You are the only one that cares! I am sorry, but next time you have to tell me, otherwise I don’t do it for you» and then she slammed the phone on me.
Well, if that’s the attitude they take with their customers, I can no longer trust them with the health of me or my family and friends.

I like this place better than a lot of the other cookie cutter Thai restaurants. They have a couple «dry noodles» dishes (think of vermicelli in Vietnamese places with some sauce to mix in the noodles, but not enough to make it a broth), and I liked what I had. It was a bit too spicy for the ones who can’t take too much heat but it was definitely delicious.
It does seem like the dishes are a bit hit and miss though, since a friend thought his dish was just alright. However, I really like seeing restaurants with different specialties instead of the standard American menu. I’ll definitely go back and try more of the other stuff.

I think this place deserves a solid 3.5 stars. Service is prompt, décor is nothing to write home about, and food is hit or miss. Here’s my take on things:
*pad thai with shrimp: at first i though this dish was just mediocre, but i soon realized that it was actually really delicious. just the right consistency and level of spice. it was more citrus flavored (i think?) than most other versions of this dish that i’ve had, which gave it a little something extra
*vegetable curry: great flavors but intensely spicy!
*veggie dish with potatoes and peanuts in a yellow curry sauce (can’t remember the name): peanuts were the perfect addition to this dish. a little heavy on the potatoes, but pretty good
*sweet and sour tofu/​vegetable dish (also don’t know the name): first few bites were alright, but then i couldn’t hang with the overly syrupy, sugary, thick sweet and sour sauce. not my cup of tea, but my friend literally ate every drop of it. just know that this dish is not a «light» dish in any way
My husband had some kind of pork dish that was apparently intensely spicy even though it didn’t have a little «spicy» indicator on the menu. Then again, he’s kind of a wuss when it comes to spice so it may not have been that bad. Can’t speak for myself because I don’t eat pork.
I’ll definitely be back to this place because I love Thai food and I can walk there in about 5 minutes. If I didn’t live so close though, I probably wouldn’t seek it out that often.

My co-​workers and I order take out from Nipa Pon about once a month for the last 8 months. They have raised the prices significantly to a point where I don’t want to order from here anymore. Tom Kha Gai soup went from $ 3.95 to $ 8.50. WTF? The portion size is equivalent to 12 ounces. When I lived in San Francisco I would pay $ 7.95 for 3X as much. They have become super cheap on their curries too, not giving enough and instead using fillers like onions and potatoes. Oh well, their loss. Not going back.

I’ll be back again and again. This is simple Thai food at a good price with good service.

I love this food. I love their pad thai noodles. I am going to give it a 3.5 /​5 (not 4) stars for it. The food is great but the service is bad. Sometimes, the quantity varies. Walking in during office lunch hours versus a little later.
I generally liked their vegetarian menu. Most stuff out there is good. Pad Thai, they use the right kind of noodles. (I am a huge fan of it and use this to test a restaurant’s skills)
Overall, a good place.

We ordered lunch to go the other day. You need to order $ 15 worth of food in order to use a credit card.
Calamari fritters — Not bad. A little over breaded but I actually liked them. Can’t go wrong with fried food though. The dipping sauce was nice, sweet with a slight kick.
Pad Thai — Just ok. There was something missing and I can’t figure it out. A punch of some sort. There was the citrus taste but no kick to it. They put everything separate in our to go box and we mixed it together when we got home so it gave it a fresh taste. Smart idea.
Pra Ram — A bit runny for a peanut sauce. This was a tofu and vegetable mix with a side of rice and peanut sauce. The sauce did have a nice flavor. The tofu was really tough, the broccoli was over cooked, green beans just right.
Those that have posted great reviews, I would go back and try what they recommended. Cheers!
Happy Eating!

This review is specifically for dinner, but from other Unilocalers it sounds like this is a great lunch spot.
The ambiance was modest — I wouldn’t say First Date worthy, but certainly in the dating for 6 months range (semi-​dim lighting and cloth napkins).
Service was great! There was only one waitress/​hostess and she took care of all the tables there. However there was only one other patron at the time I was dining, so not exactly the place to be at 8pm on a Friday night.
The food was mediocre. We ordered the «Fresh Spring Rolls» as an appetizer — big mistake. The only thing reminiscent of this and a spring roll was the rice paper. The filling was completely void of herbs and flavor. Pad See Eww was ok. The tofu was completely burnt, which i enjoyed, but my sister did not. We also had the yellow curry, this was the highlight of the whole meal, it was rich and flavorful with a good amount of chicken.
Too many Thai options in the area for me to return here, but Thanks anyhow, Nipa-​Pon =o)

Thai
Friendly food service
Modest ambience
Good chicken satay
Domestic & Thai beer
Great lunch specials e.g. catfish
Chicken & eggplant w/​rice ($ 9)

Went here for lunch today. I was immediately drawn to the lunch specials table tent. To be honest, I wasn’t that impressed by the specials. They looked very similar to the items on the regular lunch menu, but more expensive. I like getting a good deal and did not feel like I did here.
I ended up ordering Noodle Soup with Chicken and my coworker ordered Tom Yum with Prawns. Both dishes were decent, but nothing spectacular. My coworker found a hair in his soup, which somewhat spoiled his appetite.
I also ordered a Thai Iced Tea as i’m a sucker for it. $ 2.50 was a pretty standard price, but they served it in a large glass with minimal ice which made me quite happy! They also have a decent selection of beer, which is always a bonus for me.

For the little hole in the wall place that it is, Nipa-​Pon serves up some pretty killer Thai food. I was pleasantly surprised how good our dishes were when we popped in for a late dinner. We ordered the green curry chicken rice and pad see ew. We got big portions (I still had no trouble finishing off my noodles) and great flavors. The service is good, friendly, and I just really liked this place! Not to mention, the prices are pretty cheap too.

Kobeya was jammed and after five solid days of hotel buffet food I was in desperate need of something that wasn’t rubber chicken and with a cold bug raging through my body I was in no mood for driving around.
I’d seen Nipa-​Pon across the road a few times before but hadn’t been inspired to go after looking it up on Unilocal!Its day had come. Not the most inspiring restaurant but clean and comfortable.
There was no sign of the old lady to give me a hard time as she appears to have done to others but a sweet young waitress who made me feel very welcome and gave extraordinarily attentive, friendly and efficient service throughout. She gets the full five stars for service.
The Thai spring rolls were a little disappointing, thicker wrap and more cooked than I am used to but the spicing was good and worked well with the sweet dipping sauce.
The red pumpkin curry with salmon was authentic and delicious, spicing and thickness exactly as it should be with good sized pieces of salmon and crispy fresh vegetables and the rice was just claggy enough to be lowered into the sauce without dissolving.
It was a pleasant enough lunch at a decent price, just over 20 bucks, my three stars means I enjoyed it but have no compelling reason to go back while there are still new places to be tried.

The food’s like that of any other Thai restaurant. So I’d give the place 4 stars for distance coupled with good staple food.
However, minus one star for having dry pad thai. It’s much better if you ask for extra sauce.
Minus another star for the rude service when you order take out and don’t tip (the older lady watches us when we’re signing our receipt), or when you order just rice, just noodles, just peanut sauce. Some business is better than no business, right?
Until the older lady/​owner embraces customer service, these two stars stand.

Green Curry was really legit, like about as legit as any curry i’ve had outside of thailand. waaaaay spicy like almost painful, but that’s really how i like it anyways.
rad na, not very good. waaay to salty, like almost inedible, i finish my food just cause i’m like that but u was pretty disappointing
give the curry a try, i wouldn’t trust anything else

This is quite a feat in the competitive Thai restaurant business. Its a small family owned establishment however, it stands now as one of my favorite Thai Chicken Curry rice plates for lunch. Appearance is mom and pops style… so that’s okay with me.
Without question the chicken was tender as it was glazed in this colorful peanut curry sauce with steamed rice. The snow peas was cooked well with the crispy intact (i loved eating crisp snow peas). Spinach and carrots accompanied perfectly with this homemade dish. This was a surprise for me. I expected potatoes but not here.
Deep Fried Tofu and sauce: Great. No oily mess here! I was very impressed. Sauce: grinded peanuts, tangy, and a homerun by my book.
I’m looking forward to another lunch visit. I’m not sure if i’ll have dinner here but the menu has a solid lineup worth discovering.