Sawasdee is located in the more trendy Orla Bardot section of downtown, near Buzios’ two nightclubs – Zapata and Privilege. Diners can choose to be seated at candlelit sidewalk tables with a view across the bay, or in the tastefully decorated dining room with its Buddha sculptures and other Asian motifs. Even though the restaurant serves only Thai cuisine – or more accurately, Thai-inspired cuisine – its chef and proprietor is an amiable Brazilian from Rio de Janero, Marcos Sodre, who freely admits to adjusting authentic recipes to please his clientele’s tastes.

And that he does – Sawasdee is popular with visitors and locals alike, who consistently rate it as Buzios’ best or second-best place for dinner. So we had high expectations on our first visit, and I was admittedly looking forward to enjoying some jasmine rice, a personal favorite of mine.

We opted for an outdoor table and were greeted warmly by our waiter, who remained very attentive and helpful throughout the evening, offering mosquito repellent – no getting away from those critters – and materializing a pair of reading glasses we failed to bring along.

Upon reviewing the menu, we were immediately struck by the relatively high prices—not just compared to the other restaurants in town, but compared to the cost of Thai food in the United States. A chicken curry is priced at 48.00 Reais ($24.00 US dollars), a green curry with prawns, fish and calamari for two people costs a whooping 125.00 Reais, and even simple fried rice and noodle dishes will set you back between 40.00 and 46.00 Reais.

So, we figured we’d either be in for a real treat of super-quality ingredients prepared to perfection, or we’d walk out feeling somewhat ripped off.

We chose carefully from the extensive menu, which offers all the dishes representative of Thai cooking you’d find in Thai restaurants the world over. For appetizers we ordered braised short ribs with a pineapple dipping sauce and fried pastry shells filled with minced chicken, corn and peanuts. We also shared a shrimp soup enhanced by cilantro, broccoli and green beans.

The short ribs were succulent and delicious, as was the soup with its pleasantly spicy broth. The filled pastry shells didn’t make an impression, but we felt we were off to a happy start.

Our entrée choices were prawns in oyster sauce with mixed vegetables and mushrooms, and a filet of fish with carrots and broccoli cooked in coconut milk and seasoned with ginger. Both dishes were accompanied by bowls of steamed jasmine rice, and looked promising. The four large prawns were fresh and tasty, but the excessively salted oyster sauce overwhelmed the more delicate vegetables and mushrooms. The fish filet turned out to be a huge disappointment, since the quality of the fish was only so-so and the coconut milk sauce was utterly bland, with hardly a trace of ginger detectable. Neither was there any evidence of other pungent ingredients customarily used in Thai dishes, such as lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, basil, garlic, fish sauce, and hot chili peppers.

All in all, we rated the quality and taste of our dishes as good but certainly not worth the money. The bill for two appetizers, one soup and two entrees, along with the two beers, one mineral water and a caipirinha we enjoyed during dinner, came to 200.00 Reais including a 10% tip.

On a subsequent visit, the pad thai we ordered was very over-salted, but redone without question when we complained to the waiter. A green curry with fish – prepared upon request since the menu offers green curry only with beef or chicken – was anything but authentic. It lacked the heat and complexity of flavor that distinguishes this curry from its milder cousins, such as yellow or Massamam curry. Again, a base of coconut milk failed to deliver any of the flavor bursts so typical of the mixture of spices used in Thai cooking.

The blandness of the sauce was compounded by that of the fish which, this time around, had a rubbery consistency, and was unquestionably of poor quality. We shared a pleasant enough bottle of Chilean sauvignon blanc, and the spicy shrimp soup was as delicious as the first time around. So was the fluffy jasmine rice cooked with a touch of coconut milk – and we consoled ourselves with several complimentary refills.

Sawasdee, Av. Jose Bento Ribeiro Dantas 422, Orla Bardot, Buzios

www.sawasdee.com.br

marcossodre@mar.com.br

(22) 2623-4644, cell: (22) 9212-4066

P.S. After searching unsuccessfully for jasmine rice in all of Buzios’ food markets, I decided to approach Chef Marcos Sodre to find out where he purchases his supply for the restaurant. As it turns out, he receives shipments from Rio de Janero, and on arrival of the next one he kindly passed on 10 kilograms of this fragrant grain to me at cost.