Thai Corner in Sidney BC (restaurant review)

A lovely little spot in Sidney, possibly best if you’ve been running around the spit all afternoon and wandered in off the last return ferry famished, stoned and overheated.

However, it’s probably a lifesaver in the dead of winter, too, if you’re freezing and half-starved; I’ve been here for the lunch buffet sometime in early 2022 but the buffet options weren’t thrilling me that day (and the buffet was empty on this day anyway):

Coming here on the heels of eating at a Thai place my friends in Toronto particularly like, I can honestly say the small-town quality is on par with Toronto, here.  (I got the same dish both places.)

Maybe even better here.  My girlfriend the picky eater got ginger beef and considered it mids at best. I wasn’t hittin’ on a hot day, even on a nearly empty stomach.  To be honest the ginger beef is mostly what I didn’t like about the buffet last time I ate here; it’s sickly sweet and not much else, the beef ain’t great (very small pieces = easily overcooked, taking on a sticky shoeleather quality when sauced).  Almost certainly it’s premade stuff that arrives frozen and gets quickly deepfried and sauced, but that’s pretty much how it is everywhere; I really wouldn’t get ginger beef anywhere unless it was a bargain.  (The buffet felt like a bargain until I realized I didn’t like the food at the buffet station enough to get a second plate.) Lucky me, not being too picky for the entire rest of the menu.  For me the major question in choosing is price, which is why I often get soup.  I came off Sidney island starving and this filled me up for under $15.  My beer was free because they tapped the keg on it and it was like 3ml less than full.  (Server got the full cost of the beer added to her tip, immediate forward-payment of the favor.)

Here’s a closeup of the tag end of my bowl:

So nourishing, fresh and zingy yet comforting and hearty.

It’s the tom kha kai, for me!

Love it, really wholesome type of a place.  In a lot of ways they could be “doing more” aesthetically or in terms of the menu–like it’s reminiscent of basically any low-endish/midrange independant Thai place ever–except that there’s an atmosphere of genuine positivity that a lot of places just do not have, and it somehow converts these lackluster qualities to something homey and familiar, even dear.

👌 really cute place for a soup and a beer.  Skip the ginger beef; if that’s all you can feasibly eat here, probably just give the whole place a miss.