Chaam Thai Eatery in Fulham

I’ve been eating a lot of Thai food recently! I recently met Rahul and Marco for lunch at Chaam Thai in Fulham; thanks for organising it, Rahul. He frequents the restaurant quite often and it was he who vouched for its lunch menu. Due to its slightly odd location in Fulham (it feels like it’s in no man’s land across from the Waitrose), it was quite empty during our lunch – I do hope it’s doing well though as our meal was quite good. This lunch certainly made up for a recent disappointing Vietnamese dinner I had at Me Me nearby.

We ordered a few starters first to shut up our grumbling tummies – some well fried vegetable spring rolls…

…and a chiang mai sausage (homemade with thai curry paste, shredded lime leaves and pork). The sausage was a real winner with a good balance of flavours; it would make for a fantastic snack if someone were to sell it as one. Actually, we ordered it twice – two sausages are better than one (wait, that sounds wrong…)!

We each selected a main course from the lunch menu; the lunch deals are quite good, starting at £5 for the vegetarian options and only a couple of pounds more for the addition of various meats. There are both noodles and dishes with rice options. First to arrive was the kao soi, a northern Thai noodle dish that I’d never seen in London before – it’s a large bowl of egg noodles and chicken in a yellow curry soup with crispy fried noodles on top and served with preserved cabbage, shallots, coriander, and lime on the side. While not reaching the heady heights of the kao soi I had in Chiang Mai, it was still a tasty soupy treat for lunch.

The kheang kuah saibalot bet, a coconut milk rich red curry with roast duck and pineapple, arrived next. This was alright, nothing particularly special about it though I know that sometimes a coconutty curry can really hit the spot.

Our final main was the neau nam prik pao, beef slices fried with a hot and sweet Thai chilli paste (the nam prik pao). I quite enjoyed this.

I wanted to balance the meal a bit with a salad and as they were out of our first choice of som tam, we ordered their popcorn chicken salad instead. What arrived was something only a fool would order to be healthy (whoops)! Battered bits of chicken were tossed together with cherry tomatoes and lots of crunchy fried cashews all bound together with a delicious chilli dressing – not at all diet food and unsurprisingly, it was utterly fantastic.

For all this food, we paid about £45 in total for the three of us but keep in mind that we totally overordered; what we ordered could easily have fed 4-5 for lunch. One of the lunch deals (a one bowl or plate meal) would definitely be enough for one – we were just very greedy that day.  The a la carte menu at dinner appears to be the same but the dishes don’t have rice included and I may be incorrect but the prices appear to be a little higher. There’s a rumour that there may be a secret Thai menu (I don’t like secret menus – everyone should be offered everything available) but this hasn’t been verified yet. If you do know of one, do let us know please!

Chaam Thai Eatery
461-465 North End Road
London SW6 1NZ

Want even more Thai food? Selfridges is running a Senses of Thailand promotion in its food hall and selected restaurants for approximately two weeks, until July 30. I attended the launch of the event last week and sampled some of the treats from food stalls manned by Thai restaurants in London as well as the Thai menu offered by Nahm at the oyster bar. Samples that stood out for me were the mieng kham (a betel leaf parcel of nuts, dried shrimp, chilli, shallots and lime), the fruit with som tam dressing, and the green curry ice cream – all dishes I’ve not encountered in Thai restaurants here. They’ve got quite a few Thai products in stock too. All my photos from the event can be found in this Flickr photoset.

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