Savor Scout › Food guides › Pad Thai
How to find good pad Thai
Pad Thai is stir-fried rice noodles with tamarind, fish sauce, palm sugar, egg, tofu and shrimp. The bad version is sticky, red and sweet; the real one is sour, savoury and lightly charred.
What separates a good one from a bad one
- Tamarind, not ketchup — The sauce should be brown and tangy from tamarind. Red, ketchup-sweet pad Thai is a shortcut.
- Noodles that are chewy, not gummy — Rice noodles soaked rather than boiled, then wok-fried.
- Wok char — Slightly smoky from a hot wok.
- Garnishes on the side — Crushed peanuts, lime, chilli flakes, bean sprouts, chive. You season it yourself.
- Dried shrimp and preserved radish — Small traditional ingredients that add depth. A kitchen that uses them is cooking properly.
What to order
- Pad Thai with shrimp — The classic.
- Pad see ew — Wide noodles with soy and Chinese broccoli, as a comparison.
- Pad kee mao — Drunken noodles with basil and chilli.
- Som tum — Papaya salad on the side.
- Thai iced tea — To drink.
Where to find Pad Thai
Pad Thai is mostly found at Thai restaurants, so that is where to look. Open listings put 10,664 of them across the US, and these are the cities and campuses with the most.
Cities with the most
New York, NY 337 Los Angeles, CA 210 Portland, OR 176 Seattle, WA 162 San Francisco, CA 154 Chicago, IL 146 Las Vegas, NV 130 San Diego, CA 106
Campuses with the most within a mile
NYU 107 New School University 104 The Graduate Center 86 Baruch 86 FIT 84 Touro University 80
A few to start with
- Imm Thai NYC — New York, NY
80 Nassau St, New York - Panadda Thai Cuisine — Los Angeles, CA
637 N Spring St, Los Angeles - Khob Khun Thai Food — Portland, OR
431 SW Harvey Milk St, Portland - Thai 2 Go — Seattle, WA
823 3rd Ave, Seattle - Lers Ros Thai — San Francisco, CA
307 Hayes St, San Francisco - Lime Leaf — Chicago, IL
333 S State St Unit C13, Chicago
Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.
How Savor Scout looks for it
The search reads for tamarind, not too sweet and wok-fried, and treats reviews describing pad Thai as ketchupy or gummy as a strong negative.
Looking in a particular city?
Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.
- New York, NY
- Los Angeles, CA
- Chicago, IL
- Houston, TX
- Philadelphia, PA
- Phoenix, AZ
- San Antonio, TX
- San Diego, CA
- Dallas, TX
- San Jose, CA
- Austin, TX
- Indianapolis, IN
- Jacksonville, FL
- San Francisco, CA
- Columbus, OH
- Charlotte, NC
- Fort Worth, TX
- Detroit, MI
- El Paso, TX
- Memphis, TN
- Seattle, WA
- Denver, CO
- Washington, DC
- Boston, MA
- Nashville, TN
- Baltimore, MD
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Louisville, KY
- Portland, OR
- Las Vegas, NV
- Milwaukee, WI
- Albuquerque, NM
- Tucson, AZ
- Fresno, CA
- Sacramento, CA
- Long Beach, CA
- Kansas City, MO
- Mesa, AZ
- Virginia Beach, VA
- Atlanta, GA
- Colorado Springs, CO
- Omaha, NE
- Raleigh, NC
- Miami, FL
- Oakland, CA
- Minneapolis, MN
- Tulsa, OK
- Cleveland, OH
- Wichita, KS
- Arlington, TX
- New Orleans, LA
- Bakersfield, CA
- Tampa, FL
- Honolulu, HI
- Aurora, CO
- Anaheim, CA
- Santa Ana, CA
- St. Louis, MO
- Riverside, CA
- Corpus Christi, TX