Thanying Restaurant - Top Thai Restaurant in Amara Hotel

It must be more than 10 years since our last visit to the Thanying Restaurant in Amara Hotel in Tanjong Pagar, Singapore. This Thai restaurant, “serving the most exquisite Royal Thai cuisine fit for the royalties” has been around for 30 years. They started operations in 1988. In those days, we would have considered it a posh restaurant, a place to go for special occasions. Of late, with so many new and exciting restaurants, Thanying Restaurant has been off our radar for a while. Once in a while we like to return to the golden oldies and so we decided to have lunch there.

The entrance and decor of the Thanying Restaurant leave one in no doubt that it is a Thai restaurant in Singapore. It is still an elegant restaurant. But the wow factor which we recalled having during previous visits was not there. Perhaps the shine has worn off over the years or our preference have shifted towards a brighter and more contemporary look for restaurants. We thought that the best part of the restaurant was the row of tables near the windows where the pure natural sunlight could reach.

Thanying Restaurant Menu

Here are some pictures of the Thanying Restaurant Menu as well as the set menus. There is a wide range of dishes in the menu. Diners are likely to find their preferred classic Thai restaurant dishes here.

We had tom yum goong (soup with prawns) in individual servings ($10 each). The soup was nice and clear and stuffed full of mushrooms and two large prawns. We like the balanced taste. Some Thai restaurants try to pack a lot of heat into their tom yum. The one at Thanying Restaurant was just right in spiciness and sourness.

The pomelo salad ($18) certainly worked as an appetizer. The mildly sour pomelo and salad dressing made us long for more of the other food to arrive soon. And they did – and all at once. The Thanying Restaurant kitchen is a very efficient place. Lesson #1 of the day – request them to stagger the dishes.

The two warm appetizers were very delicious. We would say these are the items that are on my to-order list the next time we are here. The stuffed chicken wings ($20 for each order of four pieces) were stuffed with chicken and other things which I could not identify, but the combined taste was wonderful. The mid-wing section had been de-boned, so eating that was a breeze.

The crab shells ($12 for an order of two pieces) was even better. Each shell was stuffed with crab and other things, one of them being salted egg yolk. Extremely good.

The pork ribs ($20) were meaty with no fatty bits. The meat was cooked till tender and easily fell off the bones. The downside was that they was slightly dry. Other than that, this was another good dish.

The Thai curry dish which we selected was the pork green curry ($18). The taste of this was good but not as impressive as the previously described dishes. What was special about the Thanying Restaurant version was the thinly sliced salted fish that accompanied the dish. When dipped into the curry, the deep salted fish taste combined really well with the curry. Which makes this an excellent dish to go with steamed rice. The rich taste of curry/salted fish matched the calmness of plain steamed Thai rice. A perfect ying and yang combination!

As you see, we had quite a lavish spread during our lunch at Thanying Thai Restaurant in Amara Hotel. Which leads me to Lesson #2 – leave space for the Thai desserts. We had some regrets when we saw the Thai dessert buffet spread that was revealed. For $9 per person, a diner can have unlimited access to the beautifully presented Thai desserts. So that you do not make the same mistake as us, we have some pictures of the Thanying Restaurant dessert buffet below.

Overall, Thanying may have aged a bit since we last met, but it has done so gracefully. The food remains as good as we remember them to be. We daresay it is still one of the top Thai restaurants in Singapore. Service was very Thai in character – warm and friendly.