Went to
Yindees on Saturday night with 3 friends, which serves “authentic Thai cuisine”. I’ve never really had authentic Thai cuisine, so I will take them at their word. We did enjoy the meal, which is the important part.
The address isn’t on their website for some reason, so to make it easier for anyone else trying to find it: 22 Camp Street, Gardens.
It’s a pretty cosy place – a converted house, and we were seated in what was once probably the living room. It was a little on the cold side inside. The only problem we had with the seating is that those small tables are just too small for a party of 4 – you get your food in a platter, your plate in which to eat, and the sides in a big bowl... there’s just no place on the table to put it all. We ended up making use of the windowsill as well.
The food was good. The menu on the website is a lot shorter than the menu we saw at the restaurant, so don’t be put off by the limited choices.
For starters, 2 of us shared the Roum Mit, which was a combination of 4 starters – duck spring rolls (tasted like chicken, tbh), sweet potato chips (these were pretty good), chicken satay (really good) and Thai-style fish cakes (I would give this one a miss and ask for more of something else). The disappointing thing about this combination was we didn’t get the sauces advertised with each item; instead, we got some watered down sweet chilli sauce. Booooring. The other 2 had chicken satay. They got peanut sauce, which was was better than the sweet chilli sauce (they were kind enough to share
). We did have a debate about stabbing yourself trying to get the last piece of chicken on the skewer.
I went with the Phad Med Ma Moung (stir fry with vegetables, pineapple, cashew nuts) with prawns for the mains, and another friend went with the same with chicken. The third had Rama Song Kai (chicken breast over a bed of greens) and I can’t entirely remember what the fourth had... We opted for egg-fried rice and egg noodles for the sides. The food was all really good, and there were no complaints about the mains. Two minor gripes about the sides, though: they were a bit small for 2 portions each, and there was a noticeable lack of egg in the egg-fried rice.
Dessert was the let-down of the evening. I ordered the deep-fried coconut ice cream. I had 2 bites of the coating and 2 tastes of the ice cream, and gave up. They really should just take it off the menu. The coating was mostly tasteless, but still managed to taste doughy. The coconut ice cream tasted like Country Fresh with a little dessicated coconut mixed in. And the ice cream was all runny when I tapped in to the shell. This is only the second place in CT that I’ve tried deep-fried ice cream, and I won’t go back for more here as I have at the other.
The friend who had the deep fried banana with ice cream said it was amazing, so I guess there’s one option for dessert there. The “exciting flavours” for ice cream were vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. Next time, I’ll stop on the high note and go somewhere else if I want dessert.
We all quite enjoyed the food and would probably all make a return there. The service was nothing spectacular, but it was ok. There were no hovering waiters, which is always something to be thankful for. But once we were done with desserts, we were not asked if we would like anything else and were left alone for a long time until we flagged someone down for the bill, which was odd. But it was late at that point and the rest of the place had emptied out, so they were probably just taking it easy then.
The price was less than I would have expected. Worked out to under R200 each, including tip, the 3 courses and multiple drinks.
TL;DR:
Restaurant: Yindees
Area: Gardens, CT
Decor: Converted house, pretty cosy
Food: good starters and mains, skip the desserts
Dietary restrictions: food is halaal (place isn’t, does serve alcohol); many vegetarian options
Service: Adequate
Price: Good – under R200 each
Worth repeating: Yes
