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Siam Cafe

Review by Joel Kirk

3951 Saint Clair Ave NE,
Cleveland, OH
(216) 361-2323‎‎

After our recent experience with Great Taste Chinese restaurant in downtown Cleveland we thought we’d look up another place to delve into some Asian cuisine. See if we could find something to hit the spot when you’re looking for a nice place to sip on some Bubble Tea and slurp down some noodles. Siam Cafe was recommended to us through various people so we thought we’d go and give it a shot.

The place/atmosphere:

Siam Cafe is located in the Asiatown (or about as much of one as we have) portion of Cleveland. It’s around various other Chinese/Vietnamese restaurants along St. Clair Avenue. When you walk in, you get seated by a friendly and attentive wait staff. The service here is really great. They bring you your food fast and they check on you throughout the meal. The restaurant has 2 dining rooms with cloth lined tables and a formal feel. Some of the larger tables even have Lazy Susan’s on them! I wanted to spin something on one of those! Siam Cafe is a place you can go and get crabs…no…seriously…

What was ordered:

Joel: As an appetizer, we tried out their Signature Spring Rolls. These were the best thing I ate while at Siam Cafe. I would’ve been smart to stop here I think. The Spring rolls are lightly fried and stuffed with vegetables and chicken. They are served with a ginger sauce for dipping and were very tasty. These are HIGHLY recommended by me if you want a good spring roll.

For my lunch, I went to the Spicy portion of their menu and selected “General’s Chicken”. It was described as very spicy. It was served very bland. I really was expecting more here. It even looked good to the eye but was extremely disappointing. The only way I could down this was to douse it in the Hot sauce at the table. The rice was also very bland and had a fishy taste to it. The broccoli that was served with it was not cooked thoroughly and was sort of tough to chew on. One plus about Siam Cafe is that the food portions are HUGE. So, if you pick the right dish…it could really pay off for you. My food was just not that great of a choice but would maybe get lucky next time.

Chris: Chris went with a dish called Paradise Shrimp. This consists of shrimp served with pineapple chunks, onions in a pineapple sauce. The sauce is sweet at first and then has a little bit of heat as an aftertaste. Chris described his rice as having an earthy taste. One could take this for “tasting like dirt”…you decide. All in all, it was just a bland dish that also fell short of expectations!

Innocent bystander:

Our innocent bystander had a dish called “Chicken with Cashew” or the # 33. Not the #32. I did NOT order the #32. (sorry, that’s a “had to be there” moment). Upon first bite our bystander didn’t really like the dish but as he was finishing off the plate said it really grew on him. I don’t know if i want my food to “grow on me”. I want it to be good from the beginning to the end and leave me wanting more.

Hour Later Review:

Rock Solid. No issues here.

Would we go back:

Well, I think I MIGHT go back just to try something else. The Spring Rolls were SO good it makes me want to believe that something else at Siam Cafe is worth going back for. If it was solely based on today’s lunch, I probably wouldn’t. It wasn’t that special. Something tells me that Siam Cafe might have a hidden gem or two in there though. That’s what intrigues me about this place. If you’re reading this and know of something good here, drop me a note. Let me know what you liked there. Thanks!

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Dave	\|76.205.90.xxx \|2010-04-28 22:53:52

I'm Chinese; Siam Cafe is my favorite local Chinese restaurant. Most here are not very good. Siam's strength is in the Cantonese part of its menu, and specifically the seafood. Try the spicy salt mixed seafood, or lobster in ginger sauce, or dungeness/"Vancouver" crab in black bean sauce, or steamed whole fish (taken live from the tank to be cooked for your meal). There's really no point ordering something like General Tso's chicken, a very American-Chinese dish, at a place like Siam. Also Paradise shrimp is from the Thai section of the menu; Siam Cafe, despite its name, is not one of the better Thai restaurants in town. They do "okay" Thai and "okay" Vietnamese dishes. Their strengths are some of the appetizers, and the Cantonese seafood dishes. It's not great (I am a Vancouver native), but the Siam Cafe Cantonese-style seafood dishes are the best we can get in the Cleveland area.