Windsor - Home of Eton, the Queen (On the odd occasion) dodgy shops selling tourist tat and, surprise surprise, a really great Thai restaurant.

The Thai Castle is actually right across the road from the world famous, recently re-built castle. It is another one of those places that lets its self down on exterior looks. It is not scruffy, but the sign and frontage don’t really give much away.

We were actually planning to eat in a Chinese restaurant, which can be found further along the street. Luckily for us it was full and had a 1-hour wait. As we were both starving we headed back up to the second choice, Thai Castle. We were told we should have booked here too but they squeezed us in (Book early if you want to eat anywhere in Windsor - I expect even Burger King has a waiting list).

We were truly lucky to have missed out on the Chinese food. The Thai food proved to be far richer in flavour, so much so that we went back for lunch the next day!

The menu is listed with the traditional Thai names for all dishes, but fear not - each item is numbered.

We chose Thai fish cakes with chilli sauce, along with "Moo Ping" which turned out to be a mild pork satay style dish as our starters. The fish cakes are a far cry from a Findus style offering. You get four small, deep fried cakes made of white fish and green chilli, along with a good portion of dipping sauce. Moo Ping is served as four small kebabs, again with chilli dipping sauce. The dishes were served swiftly and were both well received.

For our main course we selected (and I cant recall the Thai names here - sorry) Deep fried cod with chilli and coriander, chicken with peanut and basil along with Thai fragrant rice. The cod is served as four (everything seems to be in fours) large parcel, deep-fried and laced with a rich sauce. It was quite spicy, but really flavoursome and tender. The chicken dish would have fed two. It was quite rich, but a good
mild contrast to the cod.

We enjoyed the meal so much we popped in for lunch the next day. The restaurant has a special £6.95 lunch time menu, which is well worth trying. There is a limited range of dishes and a set starter, all served at the same time to your table. I chose Thai Noodles with chicken, while my girlfriend opted for lamb with chilli and basil. The noodles were a chow mien style dish, with beansprouts. The portion was more than enough for lunch, and the standard was as high as the main menu. The lamb was quite hot, with a good dose of both green and red chillies.

The evening meal was excellent value at just £15 per head including drinks and a 10% service charge. Lunch was a mere £7.50 a head, again with a 10% service charge.

The Thai castle - Better value than the real one and tastier too!