Thai Diner
Today is not our typical diner review. Today, you are experiencing three firsts of Benedict and Beyond.
- This diner is not a breakfast diner
- This is a double review from two different occasions visiting the diner
- We have a permanent addition to our reviewing team
Thai Diner is a hole in the wall Thai restaurant off the main drag in Coplay (right up the street from the Coplay Eatery). We ended up stumbling upon this place after a walk on the Ironton Rail Trail, and immediately after eating lunch, we knew we would be back. Thai Diner does a lot of business through take away meals, but there is a small dining room for you to sit down for lunch or dinner. Whoever decorated loves Disney, and we mean LOVES Disney. There are Mickey and Minnie decorations lining every inch of the walls, including several photoshopped pictures of Disney characters in front of the Thai Diner building, an AI generated image of Thai culture and Disney characters, and a giant poster highlighting that they had a customer once who used to be the Mickey and Minnie characters in Disney World.
In this review, you will find comments from both of our visits, highlighting the Thai cuisine instead of our typical breakfast fare. While we do specialize in breakfast cuisine, we have a strong love of all types of food. Any meal, any cuisine, any experience, we want to share with you. We encourage you to open your mind to all the food that our world has to offer.
Lastly, we are excited to officially introduce our newest member to the Benedict and Beyond crew. Welcome Caroline! While she has begun attending the diners with us, she is still in her probationary period, so the reviews from her will be short and non-comprehensive. Once she has proven herself (and managed to stay awake for the whole visit), her feedback will be more extensive.
Bethany
The water was cold and refreshing, especially after a long walk outside. It tasted like there was already some lemon juice in the water, which I love but I'm not sure if everyone would love it. My lunch special also came with a soda, so I got sprite. I ordered the crispy chicken lunch special. It comes with crispy chicken coated in sweet chili sauce, white rice, a small house salad, and 2 chicken dumplings. The chicken was some of the best crispy chicken I've ever eaten in my entire life. The pieces were long and thin with no sussy (suspicious) chicken pieces, perfectly breaded, and the sauce coating them was sweet and tangy. Saucy chicken is one of my favorite food groups, and this chicken was added to my all time favorite list. I will never get over how good that chicken tasted. The rice was rice, well cooked but nothing special. The salad dressing was outstanding. It was a cranky, sesame flavored dressing that I could eat again and again. The salad had lettuce, cherry tomatoes, red onion, and spiralized carrot, all of which was fresh and yummy. The chicken dumplings were just ok. I didn't really love them, there wasn't much flavor that didn't come from the dipping sauce. Ben's crab Rangoon on the other hand…delicious. Crab Rangoon is another one of my favorite food groups, and this is probably my favorite crab Rangoon that I've had in PA. Not too much crab flavor but also not destroying the pallet with cream cheese. Well balanced, the right amount of crispy, and yummy interior. I could have lived without the accoutrement of raw carrot, cabbage, and an orange slice on the side. I hate when restaurants just throw that stuff on there to look fancy.
We're back! We went on a weekend this visit, so no lunch specials. After trying a few sips of Ben's Thai iced tea last visit, I decided to get my own this time. It is excellent. It is sweet and flavorful, full of lots of warm spices. I highly recommend getting one if you go. We ordered a few appetizers, including the crab rangoon and a house salad. Again, I enjoyed both, especially the salad. I do think they put too many spiralized carrots on there, but it's not the end of the world. Be sure to ask for extra dressing; the amount they give just isn't enough. We also decided to try the scallion pancakes. While they were super light and crispy, there just wasn't enough scallion flavor. The dipping sauce for them was yummy too, a nice light soy sauce and ginger concoction. This time, I wanted to get something that is a standard for me at Thai restaurants which is the all popular pad thai.
At Thai Diner, their pad thai has the option to be served with the same crispy chicken that I got last time I was here. To me, that's an obvious choice to order. Thai Diner, please chill out on the random veggies and fruits you're adding to the plates. This time, it was a pile of lettuce, carrots, cabbage, and a strawberry. It's too much. The chicken itself was just as last time, super crispy and tasty. I did miss it being coated in a sauce, not that it was dry or anything, but it would be better with sauce. The pad thai was underneath, made with the thinnest noodles I've ever had with this noodle dish. Sometimes pad thai has some tomato or ketchup added to the sauce, and this was one of those times. While it's not my favorite, the sauce was fairly good. The bean sprouts were a nice crunchy texture, but I was disappointed there were no peanuts. Overall, I enjoyed the meal, but not as much as the lunch special last time. I will say though that the amount of food you get is well worth the price. I hope the pictures do it justice as to the sheer volume of food you get.
Ben
The first time we went I got a lunch special just like Bethany. I got some shrimp with a bunch of vegetables in a stir fry with a dark gravy that was very good. The shrimp was very tender and good. I was really craving shrimp so I think it was just hitting the spot and we were out all day walking so we were ravenous. The sauce was the best part. I consumed every milliliter of it by putting the rice in whatever was leftover on the tray and I may or may not have used a spoon. The salad was surprisingly really good. It had kind of like a Japanese ginger carrot dressing but it was more Thai. It probably had some fish sauce in it, making a little bit more savory than sweet and it was amazing. Mine came with crab rangoon which is semi-intentional because Bethany loves crab rangoon. It came with a sweet chili dipping sauce which we had plenty of with Bethany's dish, but it was still pretty good. It's not the best we've ever had but it got the job done. There was something else in the crab rangoon other than cream cheese and crab which was kind of nice it wasn't so one note. I think there were some scallions or some other kind of herbs to freshen it up. On the tray, there was an orange slice which I think was just kind of like a dessert and a bunch of frilly vegetables just for show underneath it that I could live without. I ordered a Thai tea and it was absolutely spectacular. It was so sweet that I contracted diabetes, but it was worth it.
The second time we came on a weekend which meant that we couldn't get the lunch specials again, which we were a little sad about. So we ordered a bunch of stuff a la carte. We got the crab rangoon again because we're just crab rangoon fiends. You don't get a whole lot of them with an appetizer order. We also got the house salad because we remember liking it so much and it came out ginormous with a lot of carrot strings. It was a little on the dry side with one serving of dressing so we had to get a second one. The lady behind us had to have been a regular and she did the same thing so we definitely caught on quick there. The scallion pancakes were way different than most I've had. They were very puffy with a totally different dough than normal, almost closer to like fried dough you got at the fair but just like with like three scallion chunks in the whole pancake. The sauce was fine. It also was not what I was expecting so it was just kind of an odd order. Maybe it's because I'm thinking of Chinese scallion pancakes and this is a Thai one, I'm not sure. I got a Thai tea again because how could I not after how much I loved it the last time.
For my main, I decided to get a special for some reason. I got the Basillion special. I assumed it was some interesting Thai word but after asking the waitress how to pronounce it, she told me it was named after a regular so I looked a bit silly. It was effectively a Thai version of pho. It had a broth that was spiced and served with duck, rice noodles, some bean sprouts, some crushed peanuts, and some crispy shallot. The duck was beyond well done, it was congratulations. I definitely didn't like the spice in the broth. I can't put my finger on exactly what spice it was but it just isn't my favorite, probably not a detriment to the dish but it was to my palate. The special was quite pricey for what it was. We got a lot of food but I did not eat a lot, which is rare for me.
Caroline
No milk on the menu. Disappointing. Will just have to eat what food my mom brought from home.
Rating
Got to get the week day lunch specials