Best Thai Restaurants in Cheltenham: A Local's Guide

For a town its size, Cheltenham has a surprising number of Thai restaurants. Five of them are genuinely worth your time, which is more than most places twice the size can manage.

They are also more different from one another than you might expect. One is a national group doing regional cooking properly. One is a small neighbourhood kitchen with a following that borders on devotional. The rest sit somewhere in between.

The problem is that Thai menus in Britain have converged. Green curry, pad thai, a tom yum, some satay. Order the same four dishes everywhere and every Thai restaurant tastes roughly the same.

So this guide does two things: tells you which of the best Thai restaurants in Cheltenham to book, and tells you what to order once you are there so you actually taste the difference.

Which is the best Thai restaurant in Cheltenham?

If you want one answer: Giggling Squid for a first visit and a proper spread, Rosa's Thai for consistency on the Promenade, and Siam Smile if you want the small, personal, neighbourhood version.

All three score above 8 with us. The differences are about what kind of evening you want, not about which kitchen is better.

Giggling Squid, Montpellier

Giggling Squid sits on Montpellier Street and scores 8.2, with a 4.5 Google rating across more than a thousand reviews. That volume of consistent feedback is worth paying attention to.

It's a group rather than an independent, which puts some people off. It should not. The kitchen cooks regional Thai food rather than the standard British-Thai greatest hits, and the tapas-style sharing format is the right way to eat it.

What to order

Take the sharing route. Order more small plates than feels sensible and skip the single large curry each.

The southern and northern dishes are where the menu earns its keep. If something on the menu is unfamiliar, that is usually the one to get.

Its position in Montpellier also makes it easy to build an evening around, with the town's best cluster of bars a short walk away.

Rosa's Thai, The Promenade

Rosa's scores 8.1 and holds a 4.7 Google rating across more than six hundred reviews, the highest rating of the group.

It's on the Promenade, which makes it the most convenient of the five if you are staying in the centre or arriving by train. Generous portions, reliable cooking, and staff who will steer you well if you ask.

What to order

Ask about heat levels honestly and they will cook to them. This is not a kitchen that defaults everything to mild.

The curries are the strength. If you are ordering for a table, get more than one and share them properly rather than everyone taking a different curry and eating alone.

Thai Emerald, Town Centre

Thai Emerald scores 8.2, a 4.5 rating across more than seven hundred reviews, and has been quietly doing the same thing well for a long time.

This is the one locals name when they are not thinking about it. Consistent Thai cooking, real spice levels, no fuss.

What to order

Trust the spice. Thai Emerald is one of the places where asking for hot means something, and the food is better for it.

Bangkok Thai

Bangkok Thai scores 8.2 with a 4.6 rating. Flavourful curries and classics, cooked with genuine warmth.

It's a smaller operation than the Promenade names and feels like it. If you want somewhere that has not been designed by a brand agency, this is a good call.

Siam Smile, The Suffolks

Siam Smile scores 8.1 with a 4.6 rating, and it is the neighbourhood pick.

It sits in The Suffolks, a residential area that has quietly built one of Cheltenham's better food scenes. Traditional Thai dishes, curries, stir-fries and street food, in a room that seats a fraction of what the bigger names do.

What to order

The street food end of the menu. This is the kitchen most likely to reward you for stepping away from the curry section.

What should you order at a Thai restaurant?

Order for the table, order across the menu, and order at least one thing you cannot identify.

Thai food is built around balance: hot, sour, salty, sweet, working against each other across a whole meal rather than within a single dish. A table where everyone orders their own curry misses the entire point.

A good spread looks roughly like this:

One salad, something sharp and hot like a som tam or a larb
One curry, and only one
One stir-fry or noodle dish
One grilled or fried thing to share
Sticky rice, not always jasmine

That structure will tell you far more about a kitchen than four green curries ever will.

Be honest about spice

British Thai restaurants have been trained by decades of customers sending things back. Most will cook mild unless told otherwise.

If you want the food as it is meant to taste, say so clearly and ask them to cook it properly. Every restaurant on this list will do it. Then order more sticky rice than you think you need.

Is there good Thai food in Cheltenham for vegetarians?

Yes, and better than at most cuisines in town.

Thai cooking leans heavily on vegetables, tofu and coconut, so the vegetarian options are usually proper dishes rather than afterthoughts. The one thing to check is fish sauce, which appears in a great many things that look vegetarian on the menu.

Ask. Every kitchen on this list will adapt, and most can do it without flattening the flavour.

If plant-based eating is the priority, our guide to the best vegan and vegetarian restaurants in Cheltenham covers the wider picture.

How can you tell a good Thai kitchen from an average one?

Four tells, and none of them require you to know anything about Thai cooking.

Look at the salad section. A kitchen that lists two or three proper salads, som tam and larb among them, is cooking for people who know the food. A kitchen with one token side salad is cooking for people who do not.

Check whether the menu names regions. Northern, north-eastern, southern dishes appearing by name is a good sign. A menu organised purely by protein is usually a menu built for British habits.

Ask what the chef would eat. Staff at the better places will answer this properly and often steer you somewhere off the obvious path. If the answer is pad thai, you have learned something.

Taste the balance, not the heat. Heat is the easy part. What separates a good Thai kitchen is whether the sour, salty and sweet are all doing their job alongside it. A curry that is only hot is a curry that is missing three quarters of the recipe.

Every restaurant on this list clears that bar, which is why they are on it.

Where should you go for a first date, a group, or a quiet dinner?

Different rooms suit different evenings, and Cheltenham's Thai restaurants are unusually well spread across the options.

For a group, Giggling Squid. The sharing format does the work and the room can take the noise.

For a first date, Rosa's on the Promenade. Central, easy, and you can walk somewhere afterwards.

For a quiet dinner, Siam Smile or Bangkok Thai. Smaller rooms, slower pace.

For a takeaway, Thai Emerald, which travels better than most.

If you are building a longer evening, the cocktail bars in Montpellier are a short walk from Giggling Squid, and our date night guide has the rest of the route.

Do you need to book?

For a weekend, yes. For a weeknight, usually not.

The bigger town centre rooms take walk-ins comfortably midweek. Friday and Saturday evenings are a different matter, and the smaller neighbourhood kitchens have fewer tables to give away.

March is the exception to everything. Race week fills every decent restaurant in town, Thai included, so book ahead if you are visiting during the Cheltenham Festival.

Where to start

Five Thai restaurants, all scoring above 8, in a town you can cross on foot. That is a better position than most places in Britain are in.

Start with Giggling Squid if you want the fullest version of what Thai cooking can be, Rosa's if you want somewhere central and dependable, and Siam Smile if you would rather eat in a neighbourhood than a destination.

Whichever you pick, order across the menu rather than down it, tell them how you want it cooked, and get the sticky rice.

Browse every restaurant we have scored to see what else is worth booking.

Meta Description: The best Thai restaurants in Cheltenham, from Promenade favourites to neighbourhood kitchens. A local's guide to where to go and what to order.