The Nipa Thai restaurant is part of the Barton Marina Complex and is quite a large spacious…read morerestaurant with high ceilings and magnificent decoration throughout; it even has a small waterfall running through the centre, which makes for a magnificent backdrop to an evening's dining. The restaurant could probably seat at least 70 people comfortably. They have a fixed price buffet lunch menu, and a sizeable menu in the evening, including set meals and a myriad of other dishes. There were 15 of us with varying tastes, so everybody chose independently, either with individual dishes or to go with the set meals - A,B,C or D or varying price, the cheapest being around £20 a head. They roughly went up a £5 per person as you ascended the alphabet, the latter two being for a minimum of 4 people. I however, shared Set Meal V with a colleague, the vegetarian set menu (£20.50 per person); I am no vegetarian by any means, but its always a good test of a restaurants credentials to see if their vegetarian food matches up to the rest of the menu. Lets just say I was most impressed!
After perusing the menu and the waiter taking copious notes of our order, the starters arrived very promptly and thanks to some most impressive note making, everybody not only got the correct dish, they was also given directly to them, very impressive. Our mixed starter was a real triumph, won-tons, battered vegetables, vegetarian fritters was some of the highlights, all accompanied with a rather spicy fresh salad, resplendent with chilli seeds. A great start; other starters included spicy broths, chicken satay and a plentiful basket of won-tons in a potato bird's nest.
All dishes on the menu had a guide to spiciness, one, two or three chillis, whilst most dishes had none. Some of our party were brave enough to try the three chillis, quite warm apparently! Our main courses, of which there were four as part of our very impressive set meal, were mixed vegetables in an oyster sauce (a good accompaniment to the other dishes), mushroom, cashews and vegetables in black bean type sauce, tofu in a the most wonderful sweet and sour sauce and spicy Thai green curry packed with crunchy vegetables. All fantastic dishes, but the tofu was a real highlight, the accompany sauce was wonderfully flavoursome. All washed down with a couple of bottles of Singha. What a great restaurant: attentive service, a relaxed atmosphere, good company and some of the best Thai food I've had for a long time.
