Thai-Lanna Restaurant, Los Boliches

Thai-Lanna Restaurant, Los Boliches, Fuengirola

**UPDATE** There are no Thais working here now and the owner still owes wages from August 2017 – AVOID!!!

The Thai-Lanna Restaurant is situated at Calle Francisco Cano 80, which is the third street back from the sea in Los Boliches, a suburb of Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol in south-eastern Spain. It is open Monday to Saturday from seven until eleven p.m. but the closing time is flexible (and the staff arrive at six) and if you ring +34 952 587 139, ask for Jose before Sunday, he may open for you on their day off.

The decor in the Thai-Lanna is exquisite – there is no other word for it. When I took my homesick Thai wife there, she kept touching the woodwork and artefacts murmuring: “Oh, this is real Thai!’ She must have said it twenty times before our food arrived.

There is a wide selection of food and I can vouch for the fact that it is authentic Thai too, because I know the two chefs. They are both middle-aged Thai ladies who grew up in Thailand, and in Thailand, ALL females (and most men) learn to cook from a very early age. In addition to that, I lived in a northern Thai village for thirteen years.

Needless to say, but I will anyway, as this is a review, the food was superb.

The name of the restaurant needs some explanation, but I will jump to the second word first, ‘Lanna’, which is actually two words, but Thai does not leave spaces between words. “Lan” means a million, and ‘Na” means rice field(s), since Thai does not use plurals. So, Lanna means “The Land of a Million Rice Fields”, which was a kingdom stretching across northern Thailand and beyond between about 1292 and 1607. “Thai” means free, so Thailand is the land of the free, and Thais are “The Free People’.

Give the Thai-Lanna Restaurant a try, you will not find a better or more authentic northern-Thai style, which is not as hot as the food from Isaan or the south west, although if you want it hot, just tell the waitress. Those ladies in the kitchen can cook anything Thai.

Five Stars out of Five.

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