The Salutation

This Fullers pub in King Street serves Thai food, and has been doing so since 2020. Although you can come here for a drink only, most tables were set up for dining, and indeed on this busy Tuesday night almost every other table seemed to be populated with people of Thai origin. The laminated menus have dishes illustrated, and you order and pay for drinks separately at the bar, as in a regular pub. The waiting staff all seemed to be Thai, though the head chef was a Mr Tong, presumably of Chinese origin.

Tom yum goong is a classic spicy soup with button mushrooms and prawns. Less good versions of this have a one-dimensional chilli heat, but the one here had a nicely complex blend of Thai spices, with lemongrass, galangal, fish sauce, kaffir lime leaves as well as the Thai chillies. The prawns were nicely cooked and the spicing level was quite lively (13/20). Less good was salt and pepper squid, which had reasonably crisp batter and squid that was nicely cooked, but which was oddly stringy, as if it had not been prepared very carefully (11/20).

Thai green curry with prawns was another example of a dish that had a full range of Thai spices rather than just bringing a chilli heat. With a coconut milk base, the curry included bamboo shoots, lime leaves, fish sauce, palm sugar and chicken stock, along with a curry paste blend that included lemongrass, chill, galangal, peppercorns and coriander. This was better than a lot of green Thai curries that I have had elsewhere, and again the prawns were of reasonable quality and were carefully cooked. Som tam salad (three versions were offered on the menu) had raw green papaya with garlic, Thai chillies, lime juice, tamarind paste, fish sauce and beans. This was all very enjoyable, the spices quite vibrant and the papaya having good texture (13/20). 

Kapow musub kaidow (there are various spellings of this dish, but this is the one on the menu here) is a dish of minced pork with garlic, chilli and basil leaves. This version came with a bed of rice topped with a fried egg. This worked well, with the basil and garlic adding some flavour to the pork along with the spicy chilli kick (13/20).

The bill came to £42 for the food, and we had some beer separately at the bar. A typical cost per person with a couple of beers might be around £50 a head all in. Service was quite friendly and dishes arrived quickly, though there is no sequencing of courses: dishes arrive as they become ready. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by The Salutation. There are quite a lot of pubs in London serving Thai food, but often this turns out to be inauthentic glop. Here the dishes were well made, and evidence of this was that almost the entire clientele other than us were of Thai origin. I would happily come back here again.