Arrow Thai Food (Arrowtown, New Zealand)

Arrowtown, it’s just a scenic 25-minute drive from Queenstown, this gold-rush village nestled below the beautiful peaks that surround the Arrow River is one scenic place. It may be a small town with less than 3000 in population but it’s packed with history and Buckingham Street is the centre of it all. Studded with heritage buildings and miners’ cottages that stretch into a tree-lined avenue that dates back to the 1870s. These buildings in this precinct are complete with boutiques, galleries, bars and restaurants.

Parallel to this main avenue is Ramshaw Lane which served as the overflow from the main avenue which also houses several shops and restaurants and one of them is our place for today, Arrow Thai Food.

We came here for lunch a nice quiet time before we head up to Skyline Queenstown to have an exhilarating afternoon. Tucked between Gibbston Valley Cheese Shop and Patagonia Ice Cream and Chocolate Shop, Arrow Thai Food was the first restaurant we saw from the parking lot. We love Thai food and we were in dire need of rice, so it was a no brainer to dine in here. While it was still winter when we visited the place, we opted out to dine Al Fresco to enjoy the beautiful and picturesque town, after all we were in our down jackets to keep us warm.

We ordered several things and we started with some Spring Rolls (NZ$8.50 / 6pcs), crispy vegetable spring rolls served with sweet chilli sauce. It was good but it tasted like the ones we order in the supermarkets here; I am not sure if it’s the same thing but there is a very close resemblance.

Next was this Chicken Satay Sticks with Rice (NZ$13.50), marinated and fried on skewers with homemade satay sauce. There are 6 sticks of satay served with rice and a small amount of vegetables on the side. Sauce was very tasty and the chicken was OK, interestingly the chicken was fried as opposed to grilled, perhaps it’s easy to prepare it this way.

Then we have the curries, first was this Red Curry Beef with Rice (NZ$16.00), made with spicy and flavoursome red curry with vegetables coconut milk and herbs. The next curry was this Green Curry Chicken with Rice (NZ$16.00), a forever Popular Thai Green Curry with Vegetables, coconut milk and herbs. Both curries contain similar vegetables like broccoli, bamboo shoots, cauliflower and carrots they only differ in meat and sauce. The sauces of both were quite tasty as expected, the vegetables were crisp and fresh. The meat on the other hand was not enough, for NZ$16.00 we had expected more as it only contains several thin pieces of beef or chicken that was probably already pre-cooked.

In short food was OK, not amazing or great but just right. It was tasty where it has the usual Thai taste of salty, sweet, sour and spicy. Portion sizes were small and meat dishes can be mistaken for a vegetable as they have more veggies than meat. Prices are a bit high compared to other lunch set menu. Oh well what would you expect in a small town, with less options shops tend to act like monopolies as you don’t have other choice but them. While dining was not that good, everything apart from that was great.

Arrow Thai Food
Address: 27 Ramshaw Lane, Arrowtown 9302, New Zealand
Phone: +643 442 1115