Saeng Thian Thai

My friend John and I went to Saeng Thian Thai for dinner before our Lord of The Rings movies fest at the projector accesorised house he was house sitting. Saeng Thian Thai is located on Centre Road in Bentleigh East, just a short trip from our work place. Yourrestaurants.com describes it as a cheap-and-cheerful local Thai. I'm not sure if I totally agree with that.

We left work and arrived right on the opening time of 6pm. We entered to find a fairly dark restaurant, with the tired looking decor of your usual small suburban restaurant. We rung the door chimes a few times, but still no one came out to greet us. So I walked into the kitchen where I could hear voices and said hello.

A waitress came out and apologised that she didn't hear us come in. We were seated and offered menus. We got some beers and the waitress also poured us some iced water without us having to ask. Throughout the night, only one other table was occupied, so it's hard to judge the ambience. We didn't really mind and were talking the whole time.

I ordered the Fish Cakes for entrees while John got the Fried Chicken Ribs. Both entrees were good, with the fish cakes full of flavour and the ribs being crunchy. For mains, we then both chose curries. I chose a Red Beef Curry while John chose a Yellow Chicken Curry. We chose mild curries and hence they were fairly tame for my liking. The red curry flavour was quite good, but the beef wasn't. The meat was extremely tough. The chicken curry had much softer pieces of chicken, but the curry flavour wasn't the best I've had.

The service was good, considering we were the only table for a while and then one of two tables a bit later. They topped up our iced water and cleared the table efficiently. Now back to the cheap and cheerful part at the start. It might have been cheerful enough, but it definitely wasn't cheap. The prices were quite high, with our meals costing $34 with one beer each. This is similar to many other local Thai's, but with food that is much worse. I consider a cheap and cheerful Thai place to be something like Ying Thai, which serves fantastic food for extremely cheap prices.

Overall Rating: 10/20, Food wasn't very good and way too expensive.

Scores: 1-9: Unacceptable, don't bother. 10-11: Just OK,some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13: Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: An outstanding experience. 19-20:Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.