Review: Yum Saap Restaurant, Bangkok, Thailand: Traditional Thai Food at a Very Cheap Price

This week, one of the students I teach English to asked me if she could take me to lunch as she wanted me to try the food at Yum Saap. Yum Saap is a Thai restaurant franchise that serves traditional Thai food at a very cheap price and, as I hadn't eaten there before, of course I told her "yes". There are almost 30 branches of Yum Saap in Bangkok alone, but we ate at the Yum Saap branch on Rama IV Road. This Yum Saap is in a shopping center that is anchored by the mega-supermarket, Carrefour, so of course it's very popular. Yum Saap restaurants always seem to be busy, full of mainly Thais and not westerners, and, because of the cheap price and delicious food, I can definitely see why.

Yum Saap Food - First of all, if you like Thai food, you'll love Yum Saap. They serve everything from noodles to Som Tam (Papaya Salad), vegetable dishes with rice, spicy pork with rice, Pad Thai, fried chicken and more. My friend and I ordered a dish each (I ordered Pad Thai and she had Gaeng Keowaan (sweet green curry) and then we shared a plate of Som Tam. We hadn't planned on the Som Tam but, when the waitress took our order, we discovered Som Tam was on sale for only 29 baht (around 82 cents) and the portions were large. Menus are in Thai and English, and there's photos of every dish, so you know what you're ordering.

The food arrived in less than five minutes and it was delicious. Perfect Som Tam, spicy but not blow-your-head-off spicy, Pad Thai with tons of bean sprouts (sometimes restaurants are a bit stingy) and shrimp, and my friends Gaeng Keowaan was excellent too. It was actually some of the freshest food I've eaten in Bangkok and an absolute steal for the price. For drinks, we just ordered bottled iced water as it's easy and cheap.

Yum Saap's menu is quite extensive and the best thing is, it's cooked to order while you wait, but arrives extremely quickly. At lunchtime particularly, when you might be in a hurry, you couldn't ask for a better place to get cooked to order Thai food than Yum Saap.

Price of Food at Yum Saap - Yum Saap's prices are reasonable with some dishes starting as low as 35 baht ($1) and the average price beting between 40-60 baht ($1.14 to $1.70). Portions are large too so Yum Saap is a wonderful restaurant for a family to eat at, as you can order three dishes that would easily serve 3-4 people.

The Staff at Yum Saap - Often in Thailand, Thai restaurant staff is friendly but not always efficient. At Yum Saap, the staff was very friendly but also highly efficient. Food arrived on time and all together, not in bits and pieces, the empty plates were collected as we finished, more water was brought to refill our glasses and, at one point, the waitress even moved us to a new table as she thought it was slightly bigger and with a better view.

You also get to see the staff cooking the food, as it's all cooked out in the open, so there's nothing to hide. No kitchen with little secrets. Instead, it's all cooked in an immaculately clean kitchen area, with staff wearing chef's hats and gloves.

Location of Yum Saap Restaurants - Yum Saap restaurants are quite easy to find in Bangkok as there are around 30 locations and each restaurant has an enormous yellow smiley face in full visibility so you can often see them from a distance. One of the popular ones is the one I ate at on Rama IV Road at the Carrefour supermarket complex. There are others at Esplanade, Central World Plaza, and Siam Square.

Next time you're in Bangkok and looking for cheap, fast and delicious Thai food you really can't beat Yum Saap so make sure you give it a try.