One of the things I love about Bangkok, and Thailand in general, is definitely the street foods. Much like Penang, there are many food stalls offering a variety of different dishes at just about any street corners, and standard of those dishes are usually rather good.
Lai Thai Mini Market, Happy Mansion at Seksyen 17
Back in Malaysia, Thai food are usually found in restaurant settings. You get your tomyam, maybe pad thai, and many other dishes that goes well with rice, but there aren’t usually a good selection of individual dishes.
Good news is, there’s Lai Thai Mini Market at Seksyen 17 offering just that.
Thai pork leg rice, rice noodle in hot & sour soup
Lai Thai is actually a mini market that sells a selection of Thai grocery products, including snacks, condiments, sauces, and even some fresh produce. However, the front of the shop/restaurant also spot a well equipped stall that offers some 20 different dishes to be consumed on the spot of taken away.
The operators are Thai, and so are all the workers. Stepping into Lai Thai and you’ll touch your left pocket wondering if you’ve forgotten your passport. It’s marvellous.
som tam done right, and tomyam soup
The food here are prepared the traditional way with traditional ingredients, and it’s also the only place I’ve found serving pork leg rice!
So far I’ve tried the pork leg rice, tomyam, pork with rice noodle in hot and sour soup, red ruby (dessert), and their Thai ice tea. We weren’t disappointed at all.
Thai ice tea for drinks, red ruby for dessert
Other dishes to check out would be pad Thai, dry noodle, lime salad with pork, green curry, fried petai, fried rice, papaya salad, and more!
Lai Thai also offers a selection of desserts all packed up and ready to be brought home or consumed on the spot. My housemate loved the mango sticky rice and gave it a seal of approval.
KY & Haze at Lai Thai, we love it
If you’re hungry for some cheap, non-halal Thai street food, check this place out.
For other porky Thai eats, check out Thai Camp at Taman Paramount, Surisit Thai kopitiam at TTDI, I’m Spicy or My Elephant at PJ Seksyen 17.
Address:
Lai Thai Mini Market
AG-3, Block A,
Happy Mansion, Jalan 17/13,
Section 17, Petaling Jaya, Selangor
GPS: 3.124202, 101.634463
Hours: 10 am to 5 pm
Memang awesome lah! There’s a hawker center here in Penang that sells a lot of Thai food too, very near to your house in Penang… suncity at prima tanjung, many Thai foods are available for lunch 😀
Ken: oOo I shall remember this! near my house in Penang.
Thai food will never fail to attract me, Thai lunch this weekend perhaps 😛
Choi Yen: hopefully not overly packed!
KY, love Thai food. Funny my Afro American friends sometime have problem saying it. They say Thigh instead Thai. At first I could understand there no where that serve Thigh food that when I finally understood their accent of the word. Glad you showed some cold drinks which Southeast Asia is known for.
why is afro american so afraid of chainsaws?
immature: tsk!
Vickie: hahaha, yah, Thai language has even more intonations than Mandarin, which is why it can be difficult for those who doesn’t grow up around the region.
“Stepping into Lai Thai and you’ll touch your left pocket wondering if you’ve forgotten your passport” keke this is normal KY talking, but his evil twin brother would say…
Stepping into Thailand and you’ll touch your left pocket wondering if someone had already pickpocketed your passport keke
immature: terrible.
when i grow up, i want to be fehmes like NTV star KY
immature: mengarut la ni. haha.
housemate with barneyfeet wink wink
Oooh, you will be delighted to know that there are Thai fairs like these in Penang too; initially starting as temporary fairs and now some of them are settling down as permanent in the premises. Probably due to the enthusiastic reception from the local Penangites who are all just obsessed with Thai food? 😛 (Something to do with the geographical location bordering the country)
I see Ken also mentioned about the Thai fairs in Penang; you should try them soon when you’re back in town!~
Christy: yah, considering it’s like 1-2km from where I stay in Penang too!
Ooooo….pork leg!!! Plus Thai some more! I want!!!!
suituapui: so yums!
Must go one day…. try to avoid the crowds, heard it’s hard to get a table here!
Baby Sumo: don’t go on weekday lunch time then!
Well, this place is not only expensive (2 bowls of noodle – really small portioning, 1 papaya salad, 1 milk tea plus 1 watermelon juice) RM 33 but the food is over-rated. Even the Thai Temple Van Vendor taste much better..
LT: I like it precisely cos the portion isn’t big. Price is definitely not cheap but pretty much within KL range I guess. I’ll have to find out where’s this Thai Temple Van Vendor then. 😀
Couldn’t agree more
May: 😀
Agree with LT.Over rated.That is why it is overPriced.The take away Thai milk tea w cup full of ice in the pix is RM5! Somtam is inconsistent as depends on who is preparing it. No tomatoes in mine at all today & really sparse in other ingredients…Been eating there a few times this week,finally concluded its not worth it.Ppl should stop saying it’s cheap on Lai Thai FB page..(they just changed their signboard to Frame Thai btw), bcos its not & the proprietor might think they charging too low. Reasonable is a more accurate word than cheap!Ppl should bear in mind its street food quality in a coffeeshop setting. Yet it’s aircond cafe price.Dont forget the bad service too,they are disorganized & kinda rude even by our standards.Remind me of the Thais in touristy areas of Thailand…sick of foreigners in the once Land of Smiles…They have now converted the shop to a coffeeshop & open 7days a week incl public hols and close at 8pm.The grocery section is smaller than before,prob after realizing its thwir street food is a lucrative biz overcharging the tourists…oopps I mean locals.
Anon: yeap, it’s not exactly cheap at all these days. Though to be fair, there aren’t many alternatives for good Thai street food in Klang Valley. Hope there are more springing up as competition, there’s definitely a big market for this.
Totally agree with you Anon!
Was there this morning around 10.15am and not open. Any idea if its open everyday?
melanie: It’s from 11am or around noon I believe.
Thank u so much. I was there again ard 11 plus today. Finally manage to try their food. And i like it ^^
melanie: haha great!
Issit open everyday?
ewenlim: i think probably closed on Mondays.
Did they change the name to farm thai?
Chloe: I think they might have!
They changed name to Frame Thai after a minor renovation. Shot some photos : http://bit.ly/framethai_laithai.
Now they hv more tables 😀
Hui Sheng: thanks! Need them to have air conditioning tho.
I like the fried rice with pork but not the rice with pork leg and wide rice noodles in spicy pork soup. The pork leg was not as tender as I expected and I find that this restaurant is overrated yet expensive place to dine. Worst of all, the patrons were so inconsiderate to ignore the long queue.
Ling: that went downhill pretty fast :/
I just had dinner from this shop. The food is not bad but they are so overpriced!!!
Apart from that, there is no price listed on menu. After eating, it was like depending on how much the staff wants to charge me. Moreover, the attitude of the staff was not good as well. She served customer with stoned, impatient face. In conclusion, I have bad dining experience in this Frame Thai >.<
Shao Ying: yah, I wish we have other options, not many around 🙁
MyElephant@Seksyen17 is another option 🙂 good good, ambience & service with reasonable price 😊
Shao Ying: supposedly MyElephant is of a slightly higher price point tho.
open on sunday, ky?
connie: I believe so.
I just wanted to say, I’ve been hearing a lot ppl recommended about this lai Thai restaurants.. so today I went there at 10am is was opened.. I come with my partner (Thai citizen ) as she wanna try out the food.. so we are the first Customer that arrived there.. as usual they believe first Customer should be Good with everything as in they believe in feng shui too.. if is Good everything went well on that day .. so we order one boat noodle and two ice milk tea ( cha yen ) and mango salad .. while I still not yet make up my mind what I wanted to eat.. while waiting for the first order we ordered I was looking up on the menu as well as price.. But there is no price written.. But nvm.. at the end I order nam ngew noodle..(add on) , the food taste normal.. (not bad) and then I decided to take away some choices back home for my parents to try out.. while we order for the third order and ask for bill too.. the waitress went off impatience.. and look unpleasant at all.. so my partner remind her for the bill.. as the things started here… she mumbling loudly in public in Thai language.. saying: order food one by one.. not order a lot and scold scold on the middle of the way she walk to other table say wait for the ppl come count the bill la..!!!! ( my partner face look upset and disappointed at the way she say out ) so I not really know what She was saying and I know something is wrong.. I ask just partner what was she saying and my partner didn’t sound out until I leave the place and confront her about what is going on, she say she won’t step into this shop anymore.. and she told me what the lady waitress said just now.. I was really really very piss off and disappointed with their bad service attitudes. Then I only found that a lot people been comment about their bad service..
*pls do not order food one by one.. they will serve u with more bad impatience attitude..
jay: that is indeed terrible, sometimes a place gets famous and then become overly cocky, seems like this is the case with this place. A lot of my friends have had unpleasant experience with Lai Thai lately too.
Overprice
overprice…..overrated
Mano: yah prices has gone up!
The last I step in this shop was last feb 2014.Used to be their fan but as time ygoes on..price to expensive and the owner was rude. To trace back, i went to this shop when it was no name,cheap food back in 2011.the owner was by then was a nice lady, no one actually enters the shop accept for our group at that time. to cut the story short, in feb 2014, i took my family there for lunch. while waiting for our queue, we manage to get the table. since someone sat there before us, the table was dirty. so we waited or the owner to clean the table for 10 minutes. so we called her to clean the table. she came in a rude way and say “yess… i am coming, i am coming…. i will treat and serve you my highness….” (in thai). My whole family is a thai so we understand her very well. she was grumbling all the way when she was cleaning and taking to our order. my dad was very upset and angry so he asked her back in a nice way “do u talk like this to each of ur customer?”. she frowned and her ace was full of shocked and walk away. at that time we were very unhappy and we decided to pay for the food and eventhough we did not eat it… we left the shop and never step back to that shop again… if u r looking for similar shop, u should try sbai thai market at ampang old town.. nearby the police station(traffic police). nice food…and the owner is a very nice lady.
Mano: i know what you mean.