Tamarind House

IMPORTANT: Tamarind house is currently CLOSED. The owner went back to Thailand.
Decent food selection and affordable lunch specials. I like the Ma Ke Mow.

Very nice staff at this restaurant! I came here to pick up some tofu soup to go for my friend who was sick. (The friend loved the soup.) The staff were so friendly and helpful, and let me wait inside and charge my phone for 45 minutes after ordering the soup while waiting for my ride, which was very late. The soup was cheap, too!

NEWS FLASH! March 2014
Tamarind House has officially closed, and Phở House is going to open in its place. I heard the family returned to Thailand. Best of luck to all of you! We’ll miss having you in our neighborhood!
May 5, 2015 update: We miss Tamarind House so much!
Old review:
Tamarind House has great Tom Yum Goong Soup with fresh jumbo shrimp and lime.
Shrimp or chicken satay is a treat here. Excellent Pad Thai.
The staff is friendly and attentive, and the booth seats are comfortable and private.
Take out is quick.
I hope some day they will consider opening from 3 to 5pm Monday through Friday, instead of taking the break. I’d be there in 2 seconds flat!

I’ve ever actually taken the time to go out of my way to write a review, but figured I’d sign up for Unilocal and other sites just for these guys. Never had bad Thai. Had mediocre, but never just plain bad. The screwed up every aspect of the order. Wanted a chicken basil dish and they did a beef dish. Not only did they screw it up, but it was awful. The sauce was overly fishy and there were no noodles or anything other than a few peppers, and mushrooms. I believe there was one or two pieces of basil in the entire dish. My girlfriend got Tom Yum Goong and hated it as well. The shrimp seemed like it got freezer burn and they decided to plop it in a plain broth with a few mushrooms. The fried tofu was also a plain as can be. The only highlight was that the fresh rolls weren’t that bad. The issue was that was it didn’t have any chicken as promised in the description. There’s dozens of Thai places in the area and ALL of them are better than this place.
I wouldn’t feed this food to my worse enemy. Wish I could give negative stars.

Appetizer Chicken curry puff was good. Tom yum soup was ok. I think I ordered a entrée which was not spicy at all which I didnt like.

Do not order from here! Worst Thai delivery we have EVER had. Absolutely no taste, no spice, nothing seemed fresh and the rice was overcooked. How do you overcook rice?! We ordered the pad Thai (basically came as steamed noodles with one or two pieces of chicken), red curry (which came as a bland yellow curry) and chicken satay (somewhat palatable, but nothing special).
Thai food is supposed to be full of flavor. This was almost intolerable, should have sent it back.
One star because the staff was friendly on the phone.

I got take out and it was green curry with vegetarian pancakes. They were soggy dripping with grease– and the curry was the most bland curry I’ve ever had. Maybe it was because I got delivery and didn’t order the pad Thai but won’t ever go here again.
It has good ratings so I wish I had better but maybe sit down would be a better idea than delivery…

I was really impressed with the food. I ordered hot beef expecting it to be hot, it was not, but it was still really good. If you want it hot you’ll have to ask for it. The papaya salad was delicious. I’d certainly eat there again.

I’m not crazy about Thai food but this place convinced me into it. I went for dinner on a Sunday at 6 and it was completely empty but started filling up after 6:30. I was overwhelmed with options on their menu, and ended up ordering beef with broccoli and asked that it be spicy, which wasn’t a problem. Thanks to the uniquely tasty beef, I will be back here.

Said to be one of the best Thai restaurants from my righteous and picky WGBH Aunt… that is an honorable compliment…
The curry here is amazingly crafted and tasteful for cheap neighborhood Thai.
I ordered the shrimp papaya salad tossed in the sweet and sour dressing and topped with peanut crumbles. The fresh rolls where delicious bits of veggies and vermicelli that were so good on their own they didn’t need a peanut dipping sauce.
My aunt swears by the Pla’n Vegetables… which features fried bony fish.
The best thing about this little restaurant in Porter Square is that you know you’re getting moderately priced commercialized dinner, so you can’t expect it to be the best hole-​in-​the-​wall authentic THAI food or the worst street-​scraps of Thai you ever tasted.
This restaurant falls right in the middle on the positive and negative spectrum of Thai delight.

Outstanding food, pricing, and service. Top marks!

I really liked going here at one time … their pad Thai was pretty good in its day. Now the menu has exploded and I feel like they do everything ok but not great. Their Thai stuff is still ok but I won’t go out of my way to come here unless I am meeting someone in the area. I think they should go back to a streamlined menu and concentrate on doing those items well. So sad …

Stuffed Wings: Chicken wings stuffed with shrimp, chicken vegetables served with sweet chili scallion sauce. These were ok: the drumsticks were big, not dry, but the stuffing was bland.
Tom Yum Goong: a spicy tangy broth with shrimp, lemongrass, chili lime juice and mushrooms. The soup was mediocre. Nothing really special about it. Mushrooms were raw.
Pad Ped Moo Pa: Tender pan-​fried pork with fresh mushrooms green peppercorns, sweet basil leaves, chili peppers & eggplant in a spicy sauce. This dish was really disappointing. The mushrooms were raw and the dish was all spice with not a lot of flavor.
The service was very nice here, but unfortunately, the food was not very good. I wouldn’t come back.

I can’t believe I have spent multiple summers in Cambridge and this was the first once where I visited Tamarind House. My first visit was with a coworker and we had a limited amount of time for dinner but the service was fast and friendly.
Our second and third visits involved bringing groups of 12 – 14 high school students with us for dinner. The staff at Tamarind House took care of our entire group with efficient, pleasant service. And we managed to have two nice group dinners that came in at under $ 15 a person.
The food at Tamarind House is average to above average. It was the pleasant service that ensured this place got four stars in my book. The sushi is good. Eating veggie rolls here was pleasant. Many of the dishes were decent.
Some of the crowd pleasers were the tofu pad thai, the banana dessert bites, and the spider roll.

A step down from the real traditional Thai restaurants that I prefer, but better than the highly-​Westernized Thai joints that seem to be the rule in Boston.
Thai food in Boston tends to fall into either of two camps. The first is typified by very traditional places like S & I Thai and Dok Bua: frequented by Thai ex-​pats, these restaurants have lots of Thai-​language names on the menu, and feature the bracing, unmuted flavors of chilies, green peppercorns, galangal, fish sauce, and shrimp paste. The other might best be described as Thai-​American: their clientele favors chicken satay and pad thai from safe, same-​y menus, many cheap ingredient substitutions (e.g., green peas for Thai baby eggplant, curries from a can), and few arresting flavors. Tamarind House falls somewhere in the middle, not quite offering the street-​food ferociousness of my traditional favorites, but still pleasing with the bright but milder flavors of Thai home cooking.
A good example is gaprow gai krob ($ 12), a stir-​fry of bell peppers, onions, and chunks of chicken with well-​crisped skin, the whole covered with a blanket of lightly dry-​fried, still-​vivid-​green Thai basil. That last touch pushes the dish from ordinary to gorgeous and delicious. Yum talay ($ 14) is a very simple seafood salad with a dressing of rice vinegar, lime juice, sugar, and dried chilie. But it’s loaded with fresh-​tasting scallops, squid, shrimp, and lightly fried fish fillets brightened with red bell pepper and red onion, a perfect summer dish.
Spicy eggplant ($ 11) shows the generous heft of most entrées here, a mound of ground chicken and sliced Japanese eggplant in a mildly fiery brown sauce, punched up with some fermented black beans and copious Thai basil. Green curry with pork ($ 10) offers the green-​on-​green-​on-​green flavors of bell pepper, green beans, and Thai basil in the coconut-​milk-​softened curry sauce, with slices of Thai melon for mildly bitter contrast and tender slices of pork loin. The rarely seen Northern Thai dish of salmon haw moak ($ 14) is an airy, delectable, soufflé-​like fish mousse, steamed in a banana leaf and served with a mild coconut-​milk curry with vegetables.
Noodle dishes include a creditable pad woonsen ($ 7/​lunch, $ 9/​dinner), slippery, transparent mung-​bean noodles stir-​fried with shrimp, peas, choy, and mushrooms, and khao soi ($ 7), Northern-​style egg noodles with chicken and Thai radish in a thin yellow curry, garnished with crisp-​fried noodles. Drink options include vanilla-​scented Thai tea ($ 2/​hot, $ 2.50/iced with sweetened condensed milk) and bottles of Chang ($ 3), a fizzy, refreshing Thai lager.
Service is typically friendly in a pleasantly sunny, lime-​sherbet-​colored room. Tamarind House perhaps shows too restrained a hand with its cuisine’s boldest flavors, but it’s a useful step up from the bowdlerized meekness of the suburban Thai run-​of-​the-​mill. Call it a Triple-​A Thai joint in a town with too few major-​league ones.

«Give me a third of your money!» Doesn’t get said too often, because usually when there’s excitement or buzz or strong demand (ie, crack habit), things don’t get asked for en parte. And I understand not wanting to sacrifice the table space of your entire 70-​seat dining room.
Honestly though, Tamarind House. That call proved to be your loss, and a lot of heat seekers were left out in the cold.
There’s not much to the atmosphere — purples and golds you’d find sheathing the nipples of a Mardi Gras co-​ed or lining any other fly-​by-​night Thai hut. And while we asked repeatedly for a traditional spice — a humiliation spice, see also: cough and cry and say «no really, I’m fine» spice — we were met with a tepid excursion in to the land of missed hotsibilities.
That said, the Pad Kee-​Mao ($ 7.50) did deliver bold basil flavors in a delicate gravy, with plenty of ground chicken and eggplant to please the most discerning of Americanized Thai-​seeking diners. Sampled the Tom Yum Goong to the $ 3 cup doth overflow with shrimp, citrusy zing and the right amount of chili oil (Ed. Note: as much as I love to destroy my tongue, I can’t interfere with the zen balance of a solid Tom Yum.)
And despite the many eye rolls (eyes rolled, ize rohld?) of my fellow Scovillains, I found the soothing sounds of Magic 106 point seeeeeveeeeennn’s soft rock hits from yesterday and today to be ideal mood music when chatting up new friends and old. They can’t even pretend they weren’t swaying to the Christopher Cross opus, Sailing.
Saaaaaailing takes me awaaaay to where I’ve always heard it could be.
Good luck getting that out of your head.
In grand summation, the Thai Tam ain’t half bad. I’d gladly come back for lunch — everything’s a buck or two off already low, low prices. I’ll just be sure to bring a sacrifice so they know I’m serious about the spice.

Very tasty veggie pad thai with tofu. I did add a little chili sauce to it to make it a little spicier. The group I was rolling with all asked for very spicy dishes, but I don’t think I heard one person say «Oh my that’s a spicy (insert name of dish here)!»
The service seemed a bit shy at first, but overall, they were very nice to our large group that seemed to consume 75% of the restaurant.
I’d go back again, their prices are fair and I do think this is one of the better pad thai dishes I’ve had.
Very nice atmosphere too, I kinda liked the Bedtime Magic 106.7 they were playing. Takes me back to my youth.

I ordered take out through
.
I ordered Tofu and Veg Pad Thai (spicy) and crispy shrimp appetizer. The Pad Thai was the best Ive had. It had a few pieces of tofu and a good amount of veggies. The sauce was so flavorful and just the right amount of wetness. The shrimp was good but lacked flavor. The sweet and sour sauce it came with was amazing though.
I would def recommend this place!

Not bad not bad. We came as a group of 12, and there was another group of about 15 who made reservations as well. Sadly, there was only enough space for one group to sit as one long extended table, whereas the other group of 12 were separated into 3 booths. It’s a small restaurant and could not really handle the size of the two groups. They focused on serving the other group before coming to provide us with water or take our orders. :(
Other than the wait time, the restaurant was great! The shrimp chips were nice and crunchy, with a little spice in it. Fried dumplings (9) and shrimp satays (6) were great choices for appetizers.
For entrée I had pad thai, which comes with shrimp and chicken. It was delicious, though I wasn’t used to how it wasn’t spicy at all.
So food is almost a 4, but because of the slow service, closer to a 3 for now. But I’d recommend, just not in large groups.

Although the appetizer I had was pretty good (I ordered the spring rolls), the entrée that followed was one of the most bland dishes I’ve ever experienced in a thai restaurant. I was utterly disappointed. I had the King Trio which the waiter recommended and which featured thinly sliced beef, pork and chicken sauteed in a light plum sauce along with some pineapple, tomatoes, baby corn, snow peas and mushrooms. At a price point of almost $ 12 I wasn’t expecting miracles but the food just wasn’t very good.
The booths are very comfortable and the décor won’t transport you anywhere special, it’s average at best. The service was a bit spotty as well. There’s many better Thai alternatives. I just didn’t feel like it was even remotely close to anything really authentic for some reason. Even the pad thai my friend ordered was «meh».