Thai Taste

This is a solid 3.5. Went for lunch on a Sunday afternoon with the boyfriend. The restaurant is on the basement level and has a bar in the back. There was a pretty good crowd for a Sunday afternoon. We both ordered the passion fruit bubble tea. It’s hard to find good bubble tea when you live in the middle of suburbia so I was excited. I was not disappointed. I can’t compare with other places in New Haven, but it was some of the best bubble tea that I’ve had in awhile. We both ordered one of the bento lunch combinations. The drunken noodles were pretty typical but tasty. I loved the coconut soup and wish I had a bigger portion of that. Not too sweet like other places I’ve been too. The wait wasn’t long and our waitress checked in on us several times. I did get the vibe if I didn’t finish my food the waitress would be a little upset. So that made me a little uneasy. The atmosphere isn’t great but I’d go back for the food.

I don’t know why so there are so many negative reviews but this is my third time visiting, take out, and I have yet to have a bad meal here. I usually get chicken pad Thai and that’s what I got tonight, and I’m enjoying it immensely.
Lots of chicken in the dish, surrounded by bean sprouts and crushed peanuts, the flavor was great. I’m also washing it down with a iced cold sweet Thai iced tea. NOMS!
Yeah the restaurant is in a cold dark «basementy» area but it’s cozy I think. To each their own. Maybe I’ll have to dine in to experience the staff.

Food’s pretty good (except for pad thai). I recommend drunken noodle. Price is good – it’s pretty affordable. Service is TERRIBLE though, especially during the weekend. Ridiculous wait times for food and the waiters are simply just mean. Food’s not bad, but not a great dining experience.

Come here for some good, reasonably-​priced Thai food. Portion sizes are pretty decent as well. I can’t comment on the authenticity of the food, but the dishes sure were good. I particularly like their noodles dishes (pad thai and drunken noodles in particular). I also enjoyed their dishes with coconut milk and their hot basil. Their menu is pretty broad, and they have quite a variety of dishes. Of note, I thought they did a good job of varying their levels of spiciness to meet our table’s requests. Service is pretty quick, no-​frills.

This restaurant is affordable, but that’s about where my praises end. Though I am no lover of Thai, I certainly enjoy it once in a while. But I’m not a huge fan of sweet main courses, which means I’m no lover of poorly done Thai.
This is poorly done Thai. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the worst Thai I’ve ever had – that circle of hell is reserved for the times the dining halls try to do «authentic Asian cuisine” – but it’s so unabashedly average I really have no idea what else to say about it. The sweetness of many of the noodle dishes overpowers any of the other flavors. If I wanted that I would have just brought sugar to a Burmese restaurant and dumped it in.
Their fried rice and chicken dishes are perfectly respectable. They sustain me on the occasion I come to this place with a friend. On such occasions I also bite my tongue from making commentary.

This is the best place for Thai in the New Haven area, hands down.
The Thai sampler appetizer is very good. Their chicken satay is the best and the shrimp rolls taste fresh and crispy every time.
For my meal, I always get the pad see-​ew. It’s one of my favorite dishes. I’ve tried the drunken noodles twice and they were really good too but a little too spicy for my taste. Their wide rice noodles are to die for.
The prices are great, the service is friendly and attentive and there’s a cool atmosphere. A cool place to bring friends– it has a «hole in the wall» vibe.

3.5 stars. One of the many Thai options in New Haven/​located directly on Thai central aka Chapel St. Food here is pretty reliable if not super special. They have basically all things Thai that you could want for very reasonable prices. I have come here with just one friend and also with large groups. They have a separate section the latter and you basically get a long table that can fit around 12 – 15.
Dishes that stick out in my mind here are a spicy soup (you can also tell them to adjust the spice level which is nice), the drunken noodles, and the hot basil. Lunch specials are definitely the way to go here: for the same price as a standard dinner entrée, you get an appetizer and a hearty entrée. That being said dinner is really very cheap too so you can’t really go wrong.
Service is generally pretty fast (especially compared to the other Thai places nearby) but when there are many people or if you’re in a large group it can get very slow. Some of the dishes can be hit or miss. Ambience is a bit dark since you’re in the basement but décor is interesting with pictures of Thai royalty on the wall.
Generally a solid option and a campus staple!

The food and drinks are awesome. I’ve been there twice and the service has always been good. I would put this on my top 5 Thai restaurants. I would recommend the chicken and shrimp Pad Thai.

Might cure your craving for pad Thai, but I overall was not impressed. Service was prompt, but the sampler appetizer kind of reminded me of something warmed in the microwave. The drunken noodles were good and the pad thai made my craving go away. A little sweeter than I am used to.
Overall, I would grab the pad thai again, but the restaurant as a whole made me go «eh». Not bad but not impressive.

The restaurant that created my summer roll/​fresh roll addiction, Thai taste is the best Thai food in downtown new haven with the best summer rolls. Relatively inexpensive, diverse and very delicious, Thai taste is a popular spot for good eats and therefore occasionally suffers from very slow service. My favorite dishes are the shrimp pad Thai (if you want to be a bit sinful), the chicken salad, the seafood sizzling platter and the curries. Thai Taste is also great for takeout.

My advice is simple: do not dine in at this restaurant, get take out instead. We stopped in on our way to Shakespeare in the Park {awesome, btw} and ordered our meal to go. While we waited, we sat in the dining room and had a few drinks. In that short period of time, I managed to be pretty grossed out. The dining area is in the basement so it’s dark but it’s also kind of grimy. The booth and table were sticky and there were lots of flies. The décor was dated and the lack of natural light was kind of depressing. The food was not bad though. I ordered my favorite thai dish, drunken noodles. I asked for it to be very spicy. Oddly enough, the dish came unseasoned and with two small sides of spicy sauce for me to mix myself. Never seen that before. The sauce was different and less spicy than other places I’ve been but still tasty. I was annoyed that I had to mix it myself because I had to make a bit of a mess to do it. My friend had suggested this place but I wish I had been more adamant about doing take out from Bangkok Gardens or the York Street Noodle House instead. Lesson learned!

My non-​profit has a group dinner here every time we come to Yale for our conference. Non-​profit = tight budget, and for all the food we got and the pretty high quality, it’s a pretty good deal.
THE COST: $ 500 for dinner for about 20 people. There were TONS of leftovers, probably about 10 boxes.
RESERVATIONS: We always get several tables near the bar; basically a section of the restaurant just for us.
APPETIZERS: The Shu Mai and Spring/​Summer Rolls were the most well-​liked. I thought the chicken skewers were a bit dry.
ENTREES: The Pad Thai and Pad See Ew were the most popular. The texture was a little too soft on the pad see ew, but it was still good. The yellow curry dishes were a bit watery, but had a great legit spicy flavor. Some of the simple veggie dishes were a bit boring, including one with chicken/​celery/​carrot/​zucchini.

If you are in the mood for some good thai food – this is a good place to stop. My wife and I got the Pad Thai and yellow curry and both were good. Service is fast and friendly. The Pad Thai was exactly what I expected and the yellow curry had great flavors and spicy.

Probably my favorite out of all the Thai restaurants on Chapel.
Great lunch special and service is pretty good. I would definitely recommend coming here for lunch, as you can get decent Thai food at a great price. The ambiance is also very nice and pretty cozy. Their papaya salad (som tum) is pretty spicy!

picked up some pad thai from here on the way home the other day. To my surprise — and delight — they prepared my food quickly (definitely under 10 minutes) which was nice not to have to wait so long.
the pad thai was very good. perhaps not the best I’ve had, but it was yummy. Will likely come back to try some other dishes sometime soon.

If you are thai looking for real thai food then this isn’t it. Like most thai restaurants in America, food is too sweet and not spicy. Having said that, their menu is pretty extensive and serving portions are large. It’s a good place for large groups too and for halloween they really do dress up the place.

Thai Taste is one of many Thai restaurants in the New Haven area and is a decent place to go to satisfy your Thai cravings.
There is plenty of seating available and I appreciated how quickly the food came out (less than 10 minutes!), especially because some of us were starving by the time we came to the restaurant. Something to note that is when I ordered the drunken noodles, I asked for my egg to be fried over easy instead of scrambled and the waitress said that this would not be possible. I’m not sure why because the egg would not already have been prepared before ordering, unless they are using liquified eggs (but I would prefer to not think that…). Also, the spiciness level of the drunken noodles cannot be adjusted but in my opinion, it wasn’t that spicy (at least not as spicy as my friend’s curry).
The drunken noodles themselves were soft and seasoned well. The onions, carrot slices, and egg complemented the noodles and the shrimp were juicy and plentiful. The portions are also large enough that you can save the rest of your meal to enjoy at a later time. Overall, this dish was thairrefic, and the combination of this dish, fast service, and large portions will ensure that this is not my last visit to this establishment.

Along with Bangkok Gardens, another standard Thai restaurant in a tiny nexus of Yale’s campus in New Haven.
I’d say it’s a little dingier and underground, but my experiences here have all been great. I’d say if you have a volume of food to order for a student organization, etc that Thai Taste is the way to go. Their consistency with drunk noodles and pad thai is really unmatched in the New Haven Thai scene.
That’s saying something. Check it out!

I stopped by Thai Taste around 10:00pm for a late bite. The kitchen was closing soon, so we were encouraged to order quickly (though we were told there was no rush to eat; we just had to order before the kitchen closed). The food was very good but quite spicy. I ordered my Yellow Curry with mild-​moderate heat and it was more in the medium/​hot-​spice range. My friends ordered the Yellow Curry without specifying the heat level; unfortunately their meal was barely edible (they tolerate spice well, but still were unable to finish the plate).
Verdict: The décor was festive (decorated for Halloween) and the staff was friendly, but I’m wary of returning because there is a likelihood that the food will be too spicy to eat.

There’s nothing atrocious about the Thai food here, but I’ve always found it to be fairly greasy, with or without noodles, and it’s rarely made as spicy as I would prefer, even when I ask politely. Plus, they keep the restaurant itself so dark as to almost be unwelcoming and tend to rush you throughout the whole meal.
Given that there’s no scarcity of Thai places (even on the same block!), I’d recommend going elsewhere.