A Seafood Restaurant Even Thais Love: Somboon Seafood

A Seafood Restaurant Even Thais Love: Somboon Seafood

I’m often known as the go-to guy for Bangkok nightlife, but I’m also a serious foodie. I enjoy exploring different cuisines in a city as international as Bangkok. I usually prefer discovering places on my own rather than chasing the ones everyone talks about. But when a restaurant gets mentioned too many times by people around me, I eventually have to try it. That restaurant is Somboon Seafood — known in Chinese as 建兴酒家.

Somboon is a classic old-school seafood chain that has been around since 1969. It has multiple branches across Bangkok, most of them in major shopping areas like CentralWorld, Central Embassy, and Samyan. Foot traffic is consistently high.

I’ve been twice. The first time was at the CentralWorld branch — the crowd was intense, the kind of queue density that immediately screams “tourist magnet.” I didn’t feel like waiting, so I switched to the branch near the Glory Night Market (Huai Khwang area). That one has upstairs and downstairs seating, so the wait is usually shorter. My personal advice: choosing the right branch matters more than the restaurant name itself. The food quality is pretty consistent across locations.

The Food

Somboon’s menu is straightforward — no complicated concepts, just seafood cooked in Thai styles. The clear star of the show is the curry crab. This dish is basically the soul of the restaurant. A lot of people come specifically for it. Some online reviews even say things like “You can skip everything else in Bangkok, but you have to try the curry crab once.” That’s an exaggeration, of course, but it shows how strong the dish’s reputation is.

When I went, I was laser-focused on the curry crab and ordered a few other things on the side. Ordering alone is always tricky — order too little and you don’t get a full picture; order too much and you can’t finish it.

The curry crab itself is polarizing. It’s not a light, clean flavor. The crab is coated in a rich, slightly sweet and oily curry-egg sauce with a strong aroma. The first bite is genuinely impressive — many people react with “Wow, this is good.” The problem is that it doesn’t hold up well for a long meal. If you order a whole portion by yourself (even mixed into their crab fried rice), it starts to feel heavy and greasy toward the end. A lot of reviews mention the same thing: delicious at first, but a bit much after a while.

On the positive side, the crab meat is handled very well. In some branches they even help crack and pick it for you, which is a big plus for tourists who aren’t used to dealing with whole crabs. For the hard-to-handle claws, you can ask the staff to take them back to the kitchen to process. They usually keep the claw meat in one large piece, so you get that satisfying one-bite experience.

Price

Somboon sits in the mid-to-upper range — not cheap street seafood, but nowhere near fine-dining prices. From online references and my own visits, the average spend is around 800 baht per person. The signature curry crab costs more: a small portion starts from a bit over 300 baht, and larger sizes go higher.

This leads to a practical point: the experience is much better with two or more people. You can share different dishes and avoid getting bored or overwhelmed by one heavy flavor. Going solo (like I did) actually makes the meal less enjoyable because you’re stuck with your own ordering choices.

The restaurant’s positioning is very clear — it’s tourist-friendly. The menu has Chinese and English, the environment is clean, the service is standardized and reliable. That’s why it stays popular with foreign visitors. As one review put it accurately: “It’s not the best seafood in all of Bangkok, but it’s consistent and safe for foreigners.” At the same time, I still saw plenty of Thai customers when I went, so it’s not purely a tourist trap.

Final Thoughts

Somboon isn’t a place I would specifically seek out alone again. But if friends are visiting Bangkok for the first time, I would still recommend they try it once. The food is reliable, and if you’ve just landed, you’re hungry, and you want something solid that won’t disappoint, it’s a safe choice.

Just don’t go by yourself like I did. Bring three to five friends. This is the kind of place that can make a group of hungry people fall silent after the first few bites.