Zen Yai

Unfortunately sometimes good restaurants good bad. Chefs or other key staff move on, ownerships change and production values go downhill. This is even more unfortunate when this happens to one of your favourite places - like for us, Zen Yai.

Whenever we were hungry in and around Civic we used to know that Zen Yai was always there for us with its delicious, moderately-priced Thai food, served by always-friendly staff. Sure, it can be popular and difficult to get a table without booking on a Friday night, but that is saying a lot if that is the worst that can be said about a restaurant.

Basically, the food has suddenly and emphatically gone to rubbish on our two most recent visits, within a few weeks of each other. There had been some rough patches in the past, that later corrected, but they seem in retrospect to be relatively moderate, and there really seems to be a problem now. On our last visit we both ordered Pad Thais - the comparative benchmark for Thai restaurants. Both dishes were 1) thoroughly bland, and 2) short on ingredients, particuarly vegetables, beyond a few sprouts. We mentioned this to the front-of-house staff and asked if there had been changes in the kitchen staff, but were told that the same chef was still there.

Given this quite bizarre turn for the worse, we think we may have to defect to Lemongrass next time around.