Bangkok 54 Restaurant & Bar

Awesome place! The food is great the atmosphere is great and above all the customer service seems to be getting better every time I visit this place. If you like hot and spicy Thai food this is the restaurant to go to.

This review will be, I hope, tasty, like the food Bangkok 54 produces. The other reviews of Bangkok 54 that I have seen appear to be accurate so there is no need for me to repeat them other than to say, "me too". Years ago, I lived in Krung Thep (Bangkok) and Nakorn Panom (which is on the Mekong River on the Thai boundary with Laos) and while there I had a chance to experience the food and the life-style of that time. The thing (at least one of the things) that I believe distinguishes Bangkok 54, is their successful attempt to bring AUTHENTIC Bangkok food to this area. If you eat here, you will get an idea of what it is like to be eating in a good Bangkok restaurant; this includes food made with fresh and wide-ranging vegetables. For example some of Bangkok 54's dishes are made with "Wild" or "Thai" eggplants (they look like small green tomatoes)". Many other Thai restaurants in Virginia only use Japenese eggplants (They are thin and purple.) When I asked about Thai eggplant at from other Thai restaurants I have been told, "Westerners don't like Thai eggplants." Another answer often used was that they were afraid that Westerners wouldn't order such dishes and didn't want to take any chances. Anybody who has eaten foreign food of any sort, prepared here in the United States, will realize that this fear often distorts what food is offered. This restaurant is not afraid. So enjoy yourselves. By the way this is a restaurant which is quite accurate in its seasoning. They will ask you if you want to tone down the seasonings but don't do it if you want the real experience this place has to offer. Instead ask them to offer you plain Nam Pla on the side as well as the usual condiments. Nam Pla means Fish Water and is what Thais use mostly in place of salt. Like salt Thai people use it to tune-up the seasoning of their food.