The Boathouse Restaurant Review

The Worst Steak in Pattaya.





Tonight Epril and I went out with the entire crew: Mike and Riza, Geoff and Honey Mae, Jeff and his girlfriend Lee, and Stan. We headed down to Jomtien Beach to dine at The Boathouse and be entertained by their Elvis impersonator.

The Boathouse is a nice place actually, located right across the road from the beach, with a large front deck for outdoor dining and a fairly cosy interior that has a rustic, wharf-side fishing village feel to it.

The food in general is nothing too bad: Standard "family style" recipes predominate, with a menu whose content seems to hail straight from the day when farang-food restaurants in Pattaya were something special, and not the norm... and restaurant owners made their dishes from home the best they could with what they could find at the local market.

The chicken satay appetizer I had was fine, and the shrimp cocktails were bountiful. Stan had a seafood platter appetizer which looked delicious. For entrees, Mike had chicken cordon bleu which he enjoyed, Geoff had roast duck which he said was excellent, Riza had fish which she gave the thumbs up to, and Epril and Honey Mae both had roast chicken which they had no complaints about.

However, Stan, Jeff, Lee, and I all had steak... 3 different styles of steak among 4 people... and they were all absolutely awful: Dry, tasteless, tough, and gray. All of us — even demure little Lee — voiced our strong opinions that it was the worst steak we had ever been served.

Anyway, at 9:00, The Boathouse's resident Elvis impersonator came on and did his thing. I will say that I personally believe that how enjoyable Elvis' show is is a direction function of the crowd size and makeup rather than any particular skill on Elvis' part, but Epril and I danced to some of the slow music (Fools Rush In), as did the rest of the restaurant, and some of the older couples got up and did a nice 2-step for the more upbeat tunes (Jailhouse Rock). Elvis (or the crowd) did a really good job of making sure everyone had a good time.

So in the end, I suppose I could recommend the Boathouse... but only for a Friday night, to see Elvis, only with a large group of people... and for God's sake, avoid the steak.