Turnham Green Thai

Backpackers swear that Thai street food tastes better with a no-frills approach than it does juxtaposed against fancy china plates and freshly starched white tablecloths. As such, this diminutive Turnham Green restaurant – which resembles a greasy spoon and actually morphs into a bacon buttie-serving café by day – ticks all the right boxes for a bona fide taste of Bangkok. Dishes are cheap, tasty and honest, if a little predictable (think spring rolls, pad thai and som tam). In most cases, they’re also entirely authentic, an exception being our laab gai, which contained sliced chicken rather than the traditional minced. Beer and wine is BYO only – the newsagent across the road has cottoned on and started stocking Singha.