Dinner at Battambang Thai Restaurant [馬德望海鮮酒家]

Battambang Thai Restaurant in San Gabriel is one of the few Thai restaurants my family likes that's near our house. It would probably confound most Americans since it doesn't present the typical Thai cuisine they likely expect.


Battambang Thai Restaurant, 1806 S. San Gabriel Blvd., San Gabriel 91776

Its current location has seen many different asian restaurants, including buffets. Battambang, however, has so far stood the test of time.


Battambang Thai Restaurant: business hours

Battambang's menu is extensive, though it doesn't serve the more average, normal curries. It does serve a few old standbys, like pad thai. The good news is that its menu has pictures for each dish, as well as several specials for larger groups.


Battambang Thai Restaurant: Picture menu

They have a non-alcoholic drinks section, and instead of water, they always serve thai iced tea, which uses red tea. It's unsweetened, so most non-Asian people may not be used to it, but I find it refreshing.


Battambang Thai Restaurant: Assorted novelty drinks

They set their house-made hot sauce on each table. While this restaurant is undeniably Thai, it seems to have a lot of Chinese influence. In fact, many of the people who frequent the place seem to be Thai or Thai-Chinese.


Battambang Thai Restaurant: Homemade hot sauce

Whenever we come here, we always order their seafood soup and bbq'd skewered meat. The soup has tomatoes and pineapples, with fish figuring prominently. The clams were an afterthought, and more on the Chinese side of the menu, but with a hint of lemongrass. All these dishes had a sweet-sour tinge.


Battambang Thai Restaurant: Clockwise, top left: Seafood soup, skewered meat, clams

These next few dishes are certainly more recognizable as Chinese dishes. They were fine, but not remarkable. I'm not sure why the family decided to order them instead of more exotic Thai dishes.

It's important, when getting fried noodles in a Chinese-style preparation, to ask if they do 兩面黃, or "both sides golden". Sometimes fried noodles means the limper version, which is one style, but 兩面黃 means the fried noodles come out fried to a golden crisp, and fried on both sides.


Battambang Thai Restaurant: from top - Homestyle fried tofu, fried seafood noodle, beansprouts

Now to the main reason, aside from the sweet and sour seafood soup, that we frequent Battambang Thai Restaurant: awesome fried chicken. Someone decided to get the fried crab, was messy in its garlick sauce, but I didn't care for that too much.

The fried chicken is wonderful -- no grease, and it comes with some sweet and sour pickled vegetables and a thick dipping sauce.


Battambang Thai Restaurant: from top - fried chicken, fried crab

At the end of the meal, Battambang offers a complementary hot dessert soup of taro root, tapioca, and corn.


Battambang Thai Restaurant: complementary dessert -- hot tapioca, taro, and corn soup

We didn't order dishes that could really showcase Battambang's strong points, except for its seafood soup and fried chicken. I strongly recommend those dishes, and hopefully the next time we go here we'll order dishes from the non-Chinese side of the menu, which are acceptable but don't offer more compelling reasons to frequent the place.