Siam Yim, Saltford

You know where Siam Yim is; you pass it every time you navigate the Bath Road to/from Bristol at roughly the halfway point. 

It used to be called the Thai Cafe, takes up no more space than your average shop front and doesn’t do anything in particular to make it stand out from the handful of average shops that surround it. So far, so very suburban takeaway? Wrong! 

At 7pm-ish on a Thursday evening, this tiny, unassuming, more-or-less roadside restaurant — more of a bright, breezy cafe/canteen really, decorated throughout in vibrant shades of pistachio punctuated by Thai-themed knick-knackery — is buzzing with cheerful locals who all seem to be on first name terms with the friendly staff. The lady doing all the hard work in the open kitchen pops out front from time to time to meet’n’greet regulars, confirm attendance at a forthcoming party and generally check that everybody’s okay. I can smell garlic frying, and fresh chillies seething, and fish sauce splashing around with soy. The air is heavy with the promise of Good Stuff; it’s the kind of place that TV travelogue chefs (Rick Stein, John Torode, Jamie Oliver, etc) rock up to when they’re touring any given region in search of great kitchens that shouldn’t be overlooked. 

As one would expect from a Thai menu, there are starters including spring rolls, sweetcorn cakes, Tom Yum soup, things-on-toast and crispy battered doo-dahs on the deceptively straighforward menu. Good! Why reinvent the wheel? From the classic array, we opted for succulent, perfectly-seasoned Thai fishcakes, smooth chicken satay served with a bangin’ satay sauce… and duck pancakes too, because one should never overlook an opportunity to roll up to a duck pancake party, and it would be rude (let alone unforgiveable, given the result) to overlook the invitation here.

On from that, eight main course options offer the choice of beef/chicken/duck/king prawn/tofu/lamb etc as a base for four Thai curries and four stir-fries (all of which come with your choice of rice or noodles as standard), turning what appears to be a limited selection into a major decision-making conundrum. We eventually settled on a classic Green Thai Curry (chicken) that did that tantalising spicy/sweet/salty/creamy thing that only a properly complex Thai curry can do, and an utterly captivating Pad Krapow laden with huge, fat prawns, the liberal presence of oyster and soy sauces creating an almost fruity chemistry with lashings of fresh herbs (basil; mint) while a handful of vibrant, al dente green beans brought yet more energy to the plate. 

Every dish is cooked to order in that lady’s open kitchen (I think her name might be Nikki) and that freshness burst through in every mouthful of both dishes, lifting the quality up, up and away from too many Thai restaurants who leave too many sauces waiting around in the background for way too long. In summary, it was all so, so good — and I mean, really, properly good.

The bottom line? We paid circa £80 (with service) for our 3 starter/2 mains feast and a bottle of excellent Sauvignon Blanc. We will henceforth be making the 7km journey from Bath to Saltford on a very regular basis — perhaps one day with my own TV crew in tow; who knows? For now, you should make the most of Siam Yim before anybody else’s TV crew discovers it.