Phi Thai

West Derby is blessed to have one of Liverpool’s most thoroughly authentic Thai restaurants in its midst, minus the city centre prices. Phi Thai is deeply invested in the history, culture, and cuisine of Thailand, something evident in the tasteful decor of the restaurant’s Almond’s Green premises, and head chef Surachit Sattapanya’s philosophical approach to fine Thai food. Set menus offer a great introduction to the fresh and flavourful pleasures of eating Thai-style, while Phi Thai’s a la carte menu offers the adventurous a lot of scope for exploring the breadth and depth of this beloved Southeast Asian cuisine.

Phi Thai’s head chef Surachit Sattapanya (Sura to regulars) hails from the ancient city of Chiang Mai in hilly northern Thailand. While Sura has gained experience working in upscale Thai restaurants around the world, there’s no doubt that the most crucial of his expertise is simply his dedication to the ingredients and cooking techniques native to the verdant valleys in in the Chiang Mai region. Now based in northern England, Sura brings a little of the mountainous subtropics to Liverpool’s West Derby in the form of dishes bursting with exotic ingredients, colour and flavour, and often laced with spice.

Phi Thai takes its name from the so-called golden ratio, pi, a transcendental number whose conjectural formula was first expounded by Euclid. The mystery of how this formula was used by the much more ancient Egyptians to build their pyramid remains, well, mysterious, but what is certain that this modern Thai restaurant in Liverpool has found a way to impart a dash of numerological mysticism to dishes as simple as spring rolls and as complex as duck pad pik Thai dam. Simply magical set menus are also arranged in an esoteric fashion, according to the cardinal points of a compass. The North set menu features dishes like steamed fish with Panang sauce and Phi Thai’s signature chicken volcano, chicken with garlic and fresh pepper flambeed with Cognac. The East features a classic Thai green curry, the West a beef massaman, and the South offers a wholly vegetarian set of Thai red curry and sweet and sour tofu. Let us help you conjure up a booking for this Thai restaurant along West Derby’s Almond’s Green.