While flipping through an English brochure on my first day of vacation in Seoul at the hostel I saw something that grabbed my attention, buckets of Thai iced tea. I love Thai iced tea and luckily so did my friend. Panasia is located near the H&M on Garosugil in Sinsa-dong and on our first night of vacation we went in the wrong direction.
Thai iced tea isn’t the only thing Panasia serves in buckets, they have several other drinks. My suggestion though for the Thai iced tea is to let it sit occasionally stirring it with the cinnamon stick. For me it was very light on flavor, but that’s because most of it’s flavor comes from soaking the whole cloves and cinnamon stick in the drink.
I ordered fried rice, because that is a basic thing that I felt like no matter where in the world it’s going to be tasty and filling and can do me no harm. Right? Wrong. Just to double check, since the last time I had Thai food in South Korea it was spicy I thought I’d double check that this tasty sounding beef fried rice with an egg on top would be non-spicy and the waitress laughed like it was absurd. Since when is fried rice spicy? True, I thought, it was a silly question and I felt kinda embarrassed for asking. But lo and behold it came and it was too spicy to eat. I could eat the egg, the cute cherry tomatoes, cucumber but 90% of the meal just hit the wrong side of my tongue in just the right way to having me nearly demolish that bucket of Thai iced tea by myself. Since when is fried rice spicy? I’d love to go back and just enjoy a bucket of the tea again or try something else from the menu but I know for me and my low spice tolerance I’m not going near that fried rice again.
I like Panasia’s atmosphere, it’s best not to go during peak hours unless you’re up for waiting, which we did, but the staff is friendly and my friend loved the food (taking my spicy fried rice back to the hostel for a late night snack).