Sawali Club    金蘭花泰國菜  

This was the second I been there, 1st time go with my colleague, we like the food and service, that's why when my son's family came to visit me, I decided to celebrate my malaysia daughter in law BD in this Thai Resaturant, can see she was very satify with the service and food.
Even my son said, they been to few restaurant in HK last few day, can't give them a warm feel, but he like here, somemore with Thai BD song (My daughter in law is a Thai)
Definitely will go again and again and again

There is a large 'MEMBERS ONLY' sign at the entrance but do not worry. You can always become a member (free of charge) after a meal. I think you get a small discount with membership!

This place is tucked away inside a tall, narrow commercial building in Wanchai. It is easy to miss. It's almost next to Wesley Lodge. You need to walk up a narrow flight of stairs.

Environment:There you have it. Nothing glamourous, nothing flashy. Family style, mostly long tables. I think they can make accommodations if you make reservations!

Service:
Loved the jovial, loud waitress who eventually sang happy birthday in Thai. I kept smiling at her like an idiot in lack of something meaningfully Thai to say. But she was very nice. And the other waitresses were efficient, and chatty. Like they all belonged to the same family. I like family-run restaurants.

Food:
Naan Not good. Too oily, and thick, and floury. I thought it would be like the indian naan but turned out to be more like the chinese 蔥油餅. If you need carbs to go with the dishes, order rice.

Pomelo Shrimp salad Pomelo was sweet, juicy, plump and (most importantly) cold! There were no lumpy, clumped-together bits of pomelo. I wonder how the fruit is prepared. Apart from the sweetly sour dressing, a very tasty ground deepfried baby shrimp helped add some wonderful flavour and bite to the dish. Gave it a slight crispness here and there. Shrimp all went to B. ^^

Chicken and beef satay skewers Upon B's recommendation, I agreed to ordering skewers. For some reason, I normally would not order skewers. I do not know why. They ran out of pork so we had 3 each of the other two meats. Turned out to be lovely. The chicken was very fatty, very tender and nicely seasoned. The satay dip was amazing - quite unlike anything I've ever had. I'd been fooled into thinking that it was a mango sauce when I first bit into my satay-drenched chicken skewer. It was very sweet, and had the consistency of pureed mango, or mango juice. The color also reminded me of mango juice. The satay flavour wasn't very strong but who cares really it tastes good!

1/2 roasted chicken, order a day in advance! It looked beautiful. You know how I love charred bits of skin. It was a fatty chicken, you could tell simply from biting into the meat - it was oily. The meat was very tender. It also tasted like it'd been marinated for some time. The downside is the quality of the chicken - chilled/frozen. The distinct smell/taste of chilled chicken was prominent. The portion just sufficient for 2 people.

Mango sticky rice birthday cake Lovely. Precisely how I wanted to end a Thai dinner. Extremely liberal on mango supply yea? It was sweet and juicy, and quite soft. Like the chicken hahaa. All in all a very standard mango sticky rice. They gave us a small bowl of coconut syrup on the side. It was not very thick but it actually works quite well because you want the syrup to trickle into the sticky rice - you don't want it to just coat the surface. I loved the 'cake'. Not just because it took the form of a birthday cake but because it was, essentially, quite delicious.

This is the best thai food in hong kong - not the usual overly coconut, underspiced stuff they serve in Soho. Try the crab, both the regular and the soft shell and of course any and all curries. The tom yum soup is out of this world. In fact, everything I have eaten here is top notch.

the only thing I dislike is the toilet paper roll that is used in place of napkins on the table. Who cares though, the place is clean, the staff is really nice and did I mention it is the best thai in hong kong??

I have been so intrigued with this restaurant since it seems to be hugely popular judging by reviews and it's a private club. I have never been to a private kitchen for Thai food. I was lucky to be able to book a table on the day but when we arrived, we still had to wait 5 minutes despite being late for 10. We were offered a table outside in the landing but wasn't comfortable with eating in a lift lobby.

So I had done my homework looking through previous reviews and ordered Roast chicken, fried baby cabbage with pork, Pad Thai, Tom Yum Kung and roast pork neck. Also a green coconut for my daughter.

The first to arrive was the most delicious baby cabbage dish I have ever had. Although I have to admit fried baby cabbage is my favourite cooked vegetable dish, I have never had a better one. This one was cooked with what they called crispy meat when in fact it was already softened by the gravy. The meat was like meat from pork knuckle and salty but with an interesting texture. It was fatty but not oily.

The green coconut had the sweetest juice and lots of coconut flesh. It is hard to get both and so we were delighted

It was lucky we got the roast chicken as the lady said this was the last half chicken left. You normally have to order a day in advance. It had the nicest charcoal flavour and the meat was so tender, even the breast was not woody. May be one of the best roast chickens I have tasted in any cuisine

Pad Thai was a bit disappointing as it had a strong tomato ketchup taste, so I won't dwell on this

Tom Yum soup was rich and flavoursome. It had lots of mushrooms and a few prawns in it. The prawns were only OK but the mushrooms were fresh and sweet

Pork neck was good but not the best we have had.

The dessert was coconut puddings and these were little individual cups wrapped in banana leaves. Soft and delicious as the coconut milk was smooth and the pudding underneath was made with jelly and corn.I am so glad to have finally arrived at this place I had read so much about.

Went there for dinner with a friend. We arrived at 7pm and the restaurant was completely empty, so it felt like our own private restaurant. The restaurant decor is very simply but clean.

We had:

1) Thai grilled halved- chicken - which we pre-ordered. Very well marinated so quite tasty but I think the other reviews here had overly stated this dish, and it was chopped quite chunky too.

2) Thai style morning glory - a bit salty for my standard but overall it's quite good.

3) Pork green curry - tasted very similar to the one my Thai friend cooked, so I would it's authentic specially they didn't tone down the spiciness of this curry, which is good.

4) Green papaya salad - it was good, very refreshing especially compare to the other 3 spicy dishes.

Overall - it was a good meal. Good value for money, home style cooking, spacious sitting and staff were friendly. It was a good job we arrived early as the restaurant began to piled up around 7:30pm and it got a bit nosy then, so a bit difficult to hold a conversation without rising your voice. I would recommend to go as a bigger group rather than just two people, so that you can order more dishes and try other things.

I had always wanted to try 泰國食品店, but then I saw this restaurant listed under another name, and after matching the address, deemed that they are the same thing. I've had another so-called private thai kitchen in CWB before but was not that impressed, so I wanted to see if this one would change my mind.

The building is full of signs that lead you to the "members only" restaurant, and the big sign Sawali Club is prominently hung on the staircase. Enter as you please, there is door man to ask for your VIP card. I think it's just some loophole they use to avoid certain licensing for restaurants, but somebody might be able to shed light on these private kitchen establishments and tell me what the fuss is all about.

The place is clean, spacious and simply decorated, giving it a homely feel, especially with the shelf of dried goods and special thai sauces and coconut juice on display for sale. The TV shows local soap opera, but I don't think anyone was paying attention to it, as most of the clients were in fact, westerners. There were 2 couples - male westerner and thai/asian female companion. and a group of 10 young lads, some in T shirts, some in swanky suits, all having a fantastic meal out. As for our group, we had 3 westerners and of course me, the Chinese food fanatic.

The waitress strongly recommended the grilled chicken which they don't normally have unless you order in advance (as are a few other dishes like curry crab), but we didn't feel particularly keen on it, so we ordered:
- papaya salad with salted crab: for an extra 2 bucks you get the salted crab on top of the salad so we thought, why not. But it turns out (as I had already suspected) the salted crab is a rather raw looking, hard, non-chewable, non-crunchy crab that's chopped up in pieces and mixed into the salad, and was duly brushed aside by our team.
- combo platter: stuffed chicken wing (crispy outside, generous filling of vegetables inside, and some skills required in preparing it), spring rolls and prawn cakes, which was all very tasty when combined with the 2 sauces provided.
- thai country style beef curry: this was a little disappointing as we preferred the thicker curry sauce (and yes, we'll stick to what we know and order the red/green/yellow curry with coconut sauce next time), but it was a generous bowl of tender beef slices, fresh okra and green beans. The sauce wasn't spicy but still quite fragrant, but as it was quite watery, it didn't go too well with the rice (looked almost like chiu chow porridge).
- pad thai with seafood: the addition of squid to the fresh prawns was quite pleasant, and the noodles were well seasoned, not spicy (but you can always add chilli to your serving), again quite a generous portion, and tasted pretty awesome.
- thai fried cabbage: we had a choice of cabbage leaf (green )or stem (white), and after opting for the greens we were not disappointed. The vegetables were still glistening and very green in colour, had a good garlicky taste to it, and was not oily at all. The seasoning was mild and complimented the dish well.
- dessert: the standard coconut juice with sago in little banana leave packets, and sticky mango rice pudding. Both came in generous portions again (8 sago puddings, a full mango with a big pile of sticky rice). Special mention for the sticky rice, though a little on the sweet side, was very well cooked - warm, sticky, chewy, and not dry (unlike the one I had a few days ago at a certain "famous" thai restaurant in Kowloon City).

It's BYOB so we brought some Tsing Tao, I had the medler and longan drink which had a lot of ice but at least it wasn't too sweet. There are 4 condiments which you can flavour your dish with. including fish sauce and chilli pepper. I love spicy food so I was quite liberal with the chilli pepper, but otherwise I would say that the dishes were already well seasoned.

Tea was refilled regularly, and the waitresses were all friendly and cheerful, and little thoughts like chilling our beer before we got onto the next bottle was appreciated. No service charge, and the dishes are pretty cheap for HK price, starting at $38 for the appetisers and salads, $48 up for curries, and even seafood was in the $80-100 range.

The place serves simple but good Thai. We ordered prawn cakes which were very good. The deep-fried chicken in pandan leaves were also pretty good. Stir-fried morning glory was OK but it was the first dish to arrive, so remember to order it later and not at the same time as the rest of the dishes.

The red country curry was very good and interesting. No coconut milk here so it's not as fattening, and tastes more spicy than your usual Thai curry found in HK. Lots of kaffir lime leaves making it very fragrant.

The bass hot pot was not bad - the whole fish with lots of mushrooms, celery, spring onions, minced meat in a preserved plum broth.

Prawn paste fried rice was nice - just a bit of the paste to have the smell and light taste, with yummy sausage, marinated shredded green mango and cucumbers. Good way to finish the meal.

Pretty decent food and this isn't the typical Thai place with dishes cooked for HK customers. Should come back again.