I was excited to visit The King & Thai Restaurant in the little village of Broesley in Shropshire which has recently been awarded ‘Readers Regional Restaurant of the Year’ in the Waitrose Good Food Guide.
The team at King & Thai pride themselves on the use of local ingredients, using meat from the butchers in the village, local free range eggs and visit the Birmingham fish market for their seafood too, fusing this with authentic Thai ingredients to produce some amazing dishes. As well as this Chef Suree runs her own Thai coking masterclasses and also has her own book ‘Cook Thai’ .
We went along last weekend to try out the food. Our first impressions were good: A really warm welcome to a cosy restaurant that was already filling up fast. I liked the warming decor, deep lilac tones with interesting canvases on the wall depicting some of Suree’s food. Our service throughout we couldn’t fault, it was friendly and efficient.
To start we chose the Thai Sharing Platter – a collection of the most popular starters, and ours included Tiger Prawn Toasts, Vegetable Spring Rolls, Pork Balls, Chicken Satay and Prawn Skewers. This was a pretty traditional selection, but was presented in a lovely way and all cooked extremely well. No grease heavy spring rolls or prawn toasts here, it was all light and delicious. It was easy to see that the accompanying sauces were homemade, and the chilli one was fiery and beautiful. They also have a selection of soups amongst the starters and a lady on the table next to us was raving about hers – the Spicy Thai Soup with Mushrooms and Coconut.
For mains, my husband and I we both went for ‘Stir Fry’ type dishes, unusual for us as we are both mad on Thai curries! Lee tried the Mou Pad Pak – Pork tenderloin with Oyster sauce. I had Chef Surees’ Tiger Prawns – Sweet and Sour. My dish had a hefty serving of perfectly cooked juicy large prawns with a rustic sweet and sour sauce, subtly flavoured. It would perfect for those that aren’t that keen on too much spice. Lee’s dish was packed with fresh ingredients, all cooked really well retaining that bit of crunch, and tender pork. He would have liked the sauce to be a bit bolder in flavor and intensity though. It was nice to see lots of fresh herbs topping the dishes throughout too. A couple of sides of Egg Fried Rice and Rice Noodles with Beansprouts rounded off the mains. Next time I’d love to try the Gaeng Phad Nua – Red Beef Curry.
Now we were pretty full at this point, but had been warned to save room for one of Surees’ clever fusion desserts. So soldier on we did! I chose the Sticky Toffee Pudding which came with Walnuts and a Sesame Tuile. The walnuts with it were a bit unusual but I liked the texture they added and the sesame tuile was exceptional. Lee chose Baked Apple Cheesecake. He liked the combination of the glazed baked apples, cinnamon and gooey filling.
We felt right at home in the King & Thai, and I can certainly see why the locals love it so much that they voted with their feet to make win their Good Food Guide Award. Our meal would have come to around £67 without drinks.
Disclosure: Our meal was free of charge but we paid for our own drinks. All opinion as always are our own
