Ban Thai

Yesterday was my son's birthday. We often opt to eat out when there is a birthday in the family and this time he chose Ban Thai and invited along a couple of family friends so we were seven altogether.
We had booked a table, which is always a good idea on a Saturday. Ban Thai can be found at 130 Laugavegur, just up the road from the bus station at Hlemmur. It serves Thai food (obviously!) and has fairly basic tables and the usual Thai decorations of pictures and carvings.
Full marks for good quality, beautifully folded, material serviettes. The menu is long and looks a bit scruffy but I think there is a new one in the pipe-line.
We could not quite decide if we should have starters or not but then noticed that they have two starters which offer 7 sticks of grilled meat, with sauce. That was just perfect for us so we had one each of those: chicken with a bowl of satay sauce; and pork with a chilli sauce poured over. They were both really good. It seems odd to serve seven sticks of meat though - it was a bit too large for one person as a starter but hard to share fairly for two or three!
(While on the subject of satay, I saw on BBC tv that satay actually means three bits of meat, so does that mean that satay sauce is just the sauce to go with three bits of meat? I need to look into that.)
We always like to pick dishes but share the results and that is what we did last night. I can't remember the proper names of them all but we had something along the lines of:
Pad Thai (very good, round rice noodles, other places I have had flat ones. I would be happy to order that again).
Beef Massman (I didn't eat this myself but it was popular with the rest, came in a clay pot with a heater underneath, quite spicy).
Lobster tails (I am never wild about lobster tails in Thai/Chinese places. In case you don't know, the lobster tails here are about 5cm long. The one I ate had the nasty black digestive tract still in which is always a bit off putting. Other than that it was fine).
Chicken in oyster sauce (good, tasty, one to choose if you don't like chilli).
Chicken with cashew (as above, lots of veg with this one).
Lamb in jungle curry (this came in a clay pot with heater. Very liquid and we were warned that it was very "hot". It wasn't very good actually, the meat was tough and I would not buy it again).
Chicken in a red curry paste (again we warned that this was very hot. The waiter said that sometimes people returned it but that he had to insist it was paid for. This was my choice and I insisted it would be fine....and luckily it was! It certainly had alot of chilli in it, including some large pieces which I put to one side. Our guests had actually been to Thailand to visit their daughter who was there as an exchange student some years ago. They said that Thai people do not seem to eat the sauce very much, it is more a cooking medium than part of the dish. SO, following that advice I fished out the chunk of chicken (covered in sauce all the same as it was a thick sauce) and I thought it was very good indeed. No qualms about ordering that again).

Not entirely sure that I have all those details down exactly right but close enough! The seven dishes all arrived together and were all hot. The rice was very good and re-filled when we needed it. We had asoft drinks, larger and a bottle of white wine. They do sell Thai wine but we went for one from Chile.

The main dishes cost around 1800kr each, the two starters were slightly less but they were large starters and the other starters cost 900kr as far as I remember.

It is a good place to eat. Not posh and the service could be better. Lots of dishes to choose from so wise to play it safe with some and take a chance with others if you are not sure what you are ordering.