Thai Orchid is located on Highway 2 in Pickering just West of Valley Farm Road in the plaza with the Running Room and the Greek Place. I came here with my mom on a Saturday evening for dinner.
I'm fairly new to Thai food but have enjoyed most of what I've had so far so we arrived and had a fairly thorough look over the menu. My mom suggested we try the cold thai rolls and mango salad and I was game for both to share. I ended up going with a chicken and eggplant dish and my mom went for classic pad thai.
Now, it took the server FOREVER to come over an even take a drink order. This restaurant isn't that big and it most certainly was NOT busy on a Saturday evening. I think there may have been a whopping 4 tables in the entire restaurant, none bigger than a party of 4 so there's no excuse for service this slow.
My mom ordered a glass of wine and she said something seemed kind of off about it but she drank it and didn't send it back. Our cold rolls came quickly followed by the mango salad. The cold rolls were excellent with a nice spicy sweet dipping sauce. They're quite a bit larger than usual so when ordering keep this in mind if its just two of you sharing. The mango salad was excellent, all the components sliced super thin and lots of crushed peanuts all over. I'm usually not a HUGE fan of mango salad but I could eat this one all day.
My main dish, Siam Style Eggplant, was disappointing at best after two excellent appetizers. It was okay but then the more I ate, the more I realized how very very very salty it was. I couldn't finish it and ended up throwing the leftovers out the next day because all I could smell was the salt off of it. My mom was disappointed with her Pad Thai, said it was good, but the pad thai at the Red House in Pickering was much better.
Overall, Thai Orchid was a decent place to eat, not super cheap but not overly pricey. The portions are generous and some of the dishes are quite good. Service was very slow without any plausbile excuse for why (seeing the two front of house employees standing around behind the bar area frequently when we needed things). I'm not sure I'll come back but I might just to try a few other dishes.