Lanna Thai

A serious craving for pad thai brought us to this restaurant. we’ve never been here but the brutal truth is that someone who has never cooked could have made the dishes we ordered and they would have tasted better.
We sat down for lunch and there was 1 server. We ordered pad thai with chicken and the fried rice with chicken. The plates were $ 9.00 each. Aside from the bad service let me get to the heart of the matter. The food is horrible. Tastless. Very bland rice. No pride in presentation or quality. The pad thai noodles were not cooked and the sauce was too salty and watery. I just don’t get it. The small peices of chicken were unseasoned and rubbery! How dare they serve this food! Or even be in business for that matter. This is a typical Vancouver disappointment. Places like this exsist because no one demands better for their money. Waste of time.

Really crappy food compared to other Thai restaurants I’ve been to. I got the red chicken curry and the spring rolls. For the 4 mini spring rolls, the dipping sauce tasted like it was from a bottle and the spring rolls were guaranteed coming from a frozen bag as I kept hearing their microwave going off before I heard them drop them in the deep fryer. It was a very disappointing portion for red chicken curry– and it wasn’t curry! The sauce was super light and did not taste like anything curry related. The bamboo shoots were massive in portion compared to the vegetables and the 4 pieces of chicken. I left most on the plate and just walked up to pay. She was surprised I was done so soon so I told her it was crappy. She just smiled and nodded while I paid and left. Oh I’m mad at myself for going!!!

Small cute restaurant with great Thai food.
The place is clean and modern. The seats are little small so not recommend for group of more than 4.
The food are great especially the northern Thai curry noodle.(Kao soi). I also like laab (spicy minced pork salad)
The service is great. Friendly and smiley staff.
The portion is small if you come from America but it seem like many places in Vancouver serve small portion. I am happy with the price and food here.(seem cheaper than Sala Thai&Kunnai Chang)
I stayed at Westin Bayshore for 5 nights and I eat here everyday.

Ordered take out from here on our way back from biking Stanley park. This is located near Yes Cycle on Denman Street, a few stores down from an all you can eat Mongolian BBQ place. If I had to do it again, I would go to the AYCE Mongolian place. If you know me and my Thai food, that’s a huge statement.
PAD THAI CHICKEN. This may not be fair but this is the dish (along with green curry) that I always order at every single Thai restaurant and it is the dish that I use to compare each eatery. Their version of Pad Thai had white noodles, with a few hidden pieces of chicken, a sprinkling of egg and peanuts. There was hardly any flavoring or sauce, which would have been okay if I had ordered curry but my sister ordered, and she didn’t get curry.
PAD SEE EW BEEF. This dish in the US has large flat noodles. Maybe in Canada this dish always comes with flat noodles, I don’t know… but here the see ew noodles were the same as the Pad Thai noodles (skinny), but they added a brownish sauce and a few broccoli. It sort of just tasted like beef stir fry. Nothing wrong with that unless you are expecting large flat noodles with broccoli.
MANGO STICKY RICE. This is the shining star here.
Moral of the story: If you come here, don’t order the Pad Thai.

We ordered take out and the Pad Thai was very bland with no chicken or veggies. The food was very overpriced for the low quality, noodle dishes.

Thai food in Vancouver’s west end. Who knew? Thanks Unilocal for being amazing, as usual.
Enter Lanna Thai restaurant. It was the answer to my hunger pangs and the solution to dinner plans for the day. It was the eve before the 2015 running of the BMO Vancouver marathon. I was in need of sustenance and something close to my hotel in the west end. I had craved either Vietnamese or Thai food that evening and so, I checked into Lanna Thai restaurant, which was about a walking distance from my hotel on Haro Street. It was definitely a small establishment that prides itself on quality authentic Thai cuisine, without all the commercial hype of a bigger restaurant space. Lanna Thai was indeed small and felt like I was in someone’s home. It just felt cozy and homespun. There were a few tables and a couple that were occupied when I walked in around 5:30pm on a Saturday night, 5÷2÷2015. The mood was casual and quiet, with exception to the semi loud bunch who kept talking nearby about weekend plans and whatnot.
The overall experience here was good, quiet (for the most part), positive, and casual. Lanna Thai restaurant, I thought, is a mom and pop restaurant that can be a hole in the wall in the west end of Vancouver, if you are not looking for it. It’s great to support local business like this one while enjoying a lovely meal in the process. They are located at 775 Denman Street in the heart of the west end district of Vancouver, BC. Like most city streets, parking is hard to come by, especially when you are from out of town. Luckily, it was just a short walk from my hotel on quiet Haro street to the busy streets of Denman. Lanna Thai restaurant accepts major credit cards, so that’s always a plus. The prices here were on point with other Thai restaurants I’ve been to in the USA, it’s just the fact that Lanna Thai is in Canada, so I had to do the currency conversion in my head before ordering. The restaurant is clean and organized. The service was good, positive, and friendly. Nothing more or less you want.
I ultimately enjoyed the green curry with sticky rice, along with an order of fried rolls as an appetizer. The curry was ordered not spicy, which turned out to be pretty good. I thought that the portions were a little small, but adequate for my needs. Didn’t want to eat too much and be all sluggish for the marathon the next morning. The sticky rice really hit the spot, after a week of traveling. It was quite nice to be able to have sticky rice again. The combination of rice and curry provided an outlet and an avenue to expend my horizons and remember the joys of having such a wonderful dish. Curries are the mainstay of any Thai cuisine and Lanna Thai does it well. I even overheard the waitstaff talking to a customer and they talked about a place in Thailand were the customer had traveled. Apparently, they both had lived and worked in the same village at one point of time or another. Thought that was kind of interesting and it brought a smile to myself.
It brought a renewed determination within me to travel more and enjoy life to the fullest. That and to have more Thai food in the process. If you like the quietness of small restaurants and the homespun atmosphere that Lanna Thai restaurant provides, best bet would be to dine here and check things out. You won’t regret it.
4 stars, pronto.
Support local!
B+

Real Pad Thai in town awash in Ketchup-​soaked fakes — she uses actual Tamarind. Food like your mom would make (if you/​she were Thai)

The food is authentic and made with love!
I love how the food is not overly sweet like lots of others Thai restaurants!
Keep up the great work

This place is delicious. And they have MANGO STICKY RICE! need I say more? I had the jackfruit salad with ground pork. Right amount of heat… actually better than some places I was in Chiang Mai! Plain sticky rice is a must with most dishes. Décor is modern and clean. Buddha’s dot the walls. Very intimate. Good service… and did I say delicious food. Also very quick.

I’ve been back several times to Lana Thai with friends and the food is fantastic. Best Thai we have found in Vancouver. Wonderfully complex flavours and just enough spice to keep things really interesting. The Chef really has something unique to offer guests at Lana Thai. Strike up a conversation and I guarantee the crazy flavour dish options will become incredible.

Portion — too small for the price
Taste — not authentic
I originally came from Chiang Mai, Thailand but now live in Los Angeles, USA
So I know what the original Northern Thai food taste like. A bit disappointed but I know I shouldn’t expect much since they target Canadian not Thai :-(

I love the Northern-​style cuisine at Lanna Thai. Malai is very friendly & it’s a nice location near Denman & Robson which is perfect for walking after. Great food & service!

My girlfriend and go to this place when we are craving Thai food in the West End. I’m a big fan of the Panang Curry and Drunken Noodles. I also always order the coconut rice. The food is delicious and flavorful. They can certainly make their food spicy if you like it that way (I do!) or mild if spice isn’t your thing (my girlfriend). It’s always god for us to find a place that can actually serve both mild and spice as we can both order dishes that make us both happy. I would definitely recommend stopping by this place.

The first time we went here, it was for lunch. We got there after the normal lunch hour (I think about 230 or 3). They were just about to close, and they took us anyway (which was great, because everywhere else had closed!)
The food was spectacular. Lunch specials are offered at great prices, with portions a bit on the small side but the flavors were AWESOME.
We thought we’d hit the jackpot! I couldn’t believe there was such great Thai food so close to home.
A week or so later, we came back for dinner.
The prices were much higher… but the portions were the same! Not cool. A scoop of rice, and a little bowl of the dish itself. We were unimpressed, but remembered the great flavors and dug in anyway.
Except that the flavors had vanished along with the pricing value. It was bland, almost tasteless; is that even possible for Thai food?
Disappointing, and I haven’t gone back since. It was like two completely different restaurants (and I ordered the same green curry both times). Maybe they have two different chefs? Too bad… I really love Thai food and I was hoping that this cute little place would be a new go-​to!
If you’re curious about this place, I’d recommend trying it at a lunch time rather than dinner. At least if it doesn’t go well, you didn’t spend too much on the food anyway.

Stopped in here while visiting Vancouver from out of town (well, country, actually). Started off with the po piah tod (veggie spring rolls), and the accompanying sauce was delish. For the entrée, I went with the pad med mamuang, a yummy concoction of cashews, carrots, onions, and bell peppers in chili paste. They offer a brown and red rice, which I suggest. Would have loved dessert, but I was too stuffed at the end of the dinner. Service was friendly, and the space was quaint and quiet. They also gave a piece of tamarind candy with the check, so I can’t complain about that!

We came here famished from riding our bikes around Stanley Park. I wanted to try their coconut rice, since I’ve never seen that on a menu before. It was really tasty! It went with with their papaya salad. We also had the tom kha? soup and panang curry. Everything was really good. The papaya salad was kind of small though.

Distinct Thai cuisine from the northern part of the country.
Food was very good.
The lady serving us was very sweet and made good recommendations. And she seems to be quite resourceful — she single-​handedly waited, cooked, served and cleared the tables!
Prices were reasonable.

The staff are very friendly here. I found out about the place when they were tweeting to me on Twitter. I live in Kitsilano and it’s pretty far from me but I thought I’d stop in one day because they told me they have Khao Soi on the menu and would even make it vegan with rice noodles and no chicken for me as well.
My husband and I have spent 5 weeks in Chiang Mai and Khao Soi is the signature dish for the city and you cannot get it at any other Thai restaurants as they are usually Bangkok style.
We really enjoyed the Khao Soi, this is naturally fairly spicy, so next time I will ask for super mild, but my husband really liked the level of spiciness.
We got black sticky rice and taro with coconut milk for dessert. This was the first time we had it and we liked it too.
We’ll definitely be back when we have a craving for Khao Soi or are near the area. There’s a lot of subpar overrated Thai restaurants in Vancouver, but I really like this one.
Check it out!

A little background: wife is Thai, in-​laws are thai, lived in Thailand for awhile… I’ve got pretty good knowledge of Thai food. And for Vancouver there is really no «true» Thai food. They always sweeten it up, bring down the spices or complicate it with North American veggies.
That said, this is a great little place run by a extremely nice lady from Chiang Mai. We had the Khao Soi (as it’s a classic northern dish) and it was pretty close to how you’d find it in Thailand save for the extra coconut milk and the cut chicken. The moo ping was good as well, but nothing is going to come close to the moo ping you can find on the corner of Soi Convent in Bangkok (trust me).
I’ve read all the reviews and the complaints of the inauthentic nature of Thai food. Welcome to Canada, it’s not Bangkok. You want authentic, take a trip. Lanna Thai has done their best to create a great little space and provide some pretty tasty food and authentic Thai hospitality.
We had to laugh, a couple came in as we were leaving and made a host of requests: «i’m allergic to peanuts, shrimp and sprouts, and we’d like some authentic pad thai». First off pad thai isn’t authentic, and secondly if you’re allergic to all that, go to Vera’s burgers down the road. Good Lord… we’ll be back, hopefully this couple isn’t.

* Attack of the bell peppers *
I love a good Nua Pad Grapow (Thai Holy Basil with beef). It is one of my favourite dishes. For some reason my favourite dish is under attack — more and more places are turning it into something more like a bell pepper stir fry. I’m not sure why. A good nua pad grapow highlights the natural flavours of the holy basil and blends them with a perfect balance of chili, garlic, sweetness and saltiness. When done right it is phenomenal.
Unfortunately it just wasn’t that way here. Those damn bell peppers attacking my dish! Here there were a trio of red, yellow, and green bell peppers along with some string beans thrown in too. The dish resembled the type of stir-​fry you may learn on a morning TV show targeted to people in small towns where you can’t get any non mass market supermarket ingredients. There was no holy basil. In fact there was barely any basil at all (two leaves total). There was almost no spice even though I requested it spicy. I couldn’t detect any chili peppers. There were of course plenty of bell peppers though. Bah. Photo:
It came with some rice which was overcooked and mushy, as well as a spring roll which was not as greasy as it looked. The spring roll was probably the best thing on the plate sadly. Photo:
Damn bell peppers!