A seafood restaurant that is so famous several fake versions of it have been created to scam unsuspecting tourists, Somboon Seafood Restaurant is known for its delicious dishes served in enormous portions.
Somboon Seafood Bangkok (建興酒家) is a popular Thai-Chinese restaurant with over 50 years of history in Bangkok, renowned for their original fried curry crab. For half a century, they have delivered the best tastes with passion and diligence. Generation after generation, the original flavours have been preserved honour the tradition of serving its dishes with integrity to its patrons.
When Singaporeans talk about crabs, Singapore Chilli Crab / Black Pepper Crab will definitely feature. When in Bangkok, think of Curry Crab, and specifically, the one from Somboon Seafood. Large crabs with succulent meat fried with curry sauce, scallions, and cayenne pepper and ready to eat with fragrant jasmine rice make every customer unable to pass up this signature dish every time.
Somboon Seafood’s legendary fried curry crab has been a global sensation since 1969, putting this seafood chain on the culinary map. If you are lazy and do not want to dirty your hands, you can order the one which comes with just crab meat (like this one), without the shells. It’s so delicious, you just have to try it. It is best when paired with white rice. The sauce is so nice that even when you are done with the crabs, you just want to finish up the remaining sauce on the plate.
It’s a very wet black pepper crab, which tasted like typhoon shelter style fried crab from Hong Kong rather than black pepper crab from Singapore because of the copious amount of garlic used.
Deep fried mince prawn ball, mince prawn roll, mince crabmeat roll, all of which were very tasty and a great appetiser.
Imagine bak kut teh ribs that have been cooked to death; that’s exactly what this dish was about, and the presentation was nothing of sort close to the photo in the menu. Stick to seafood, my advice is.
Tomyam goong, the name card for Thai soup, I would love it to be spicier.
Nothing to shout about steamed prawns where freshness is all that mattered.
I thought it was the shark’s fin egg omelette (桂花翅) that I used to eat in cheap banquets, but while the taste was similar, the ingredients was not. There was chopped up fish maw amongst the egg omelette that was coupled with beansprouts and crabmeat.
Bangkok is a favourite destination for many Singaporeans for shark’s fin and there was plenty of fins in this shark fin soup in red sauce 紅燒魚翅.
I loved to eat this crispy fish without the sauce. But fish sauce based chilli dip was ok but did not do justice to the crispy sea bass.
The rice used was very broken, and for a major producer of jasmine rice it was surprising that the quality of rice used was subpar.
The mango was not so sweet as it was not really in season.
Somboon Seafood has been featured in various travel guides and blogs alike. Yet, it’s no secret that Bangkok taxi drivers would scam unsuspecting travelers and/or diners to its infamous twin – Somboon Dee – to receive a kickback. Luckily, most of the branches are near MRT/BTS stations, so you can go via public transport. But was it worth effort? Not really, there are many good and unknown seafood restaurants in the local shopping malls.
Somboon Seafood (Surawong) สมบูรณ์โภชนา 建興酒家
169, 169/7-12 Surawong Road, Suriyawong, Bangkok, 10500, Thailand
Tel : +66 2 233 3104
Visited Jul 2023
Michelin Bangkok Edition Plates 2021-2023
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