Thai Chilli Methven Restaurant & Asian Store sits on Forest Drive in Methven, in New Zealand's Ashburton district, and wears two hats: it is both a Thai restaurant and a small Asian grocery. That combination makes it something of a one-stop shop in a rural town — dinner on one side of the counter, pantry staples on the other.
The restaurant side serves an evolving Thai menu with dine-in, takeaway and buffet options. The dine-in dinner menu was refreshed in January 2025, and the current takeaway menu was posted in May 2026, with buffet pricing shared alongside it. Rather than relying on a static website, the team keeps locals up to date through a long-running blog, used to publish menus, buffet posters and store news since 2012.
The Asian store side stocks everyday staples that can be hard to find in a small Canterbury town — mung beans sold by the kilo and 25kg bags of rice among them — handy for home cooks and households stocking up.
The business is community-minded too: it has opened its doors to local groups over the years, including a visit from the Methven Brownies in 2016. Between the buffet, the takeaway menu and the grocery shelves, it is a practical, welcoming fixture in Methven's small dining scene.
On Forest Drive in Methven, in Canterbury's Ashburton district, Thai Chilli Methven Restaurant & Asian Store runs a double act that few small-town businesses attempt: it is both a Thai restaurant and an Asian grocery. By day the shelves carry the pantry staples of Asian cooking; in the evening the kitchen serves a full Thai menu to locals and visitors alike. The team has shared menus, buffet posters and store news on its blog since 2012, which makes it one of the more quietly persistent small businesses in the district — and means its story is unusually well documented for a rural restaurant.
The heart of the business is the restaurant. Thai Chilli serves a dinner menu for dine-in, and that menu is a living document rather than a set-and-forget one: the current version was refreshed and published in January 2025. For a restaurant in a town of Methven's size, that regular upkeep is a quiet signal of a kitchen that takes its food seriously and expects its regulars to keep coming back.
The cooking, as the name suggests, leans into Thai food's defining trait — chilli, balanced against the coconut richness, citrus lift and savoury depth the cuisine is known for. And like any proper Thai meal, it is built for tables rather than solitary diners: order across the menu, share, and let rice do its diplomatic work.
Two other service modes round things out. A takeaway menu — the latest posted in May 2026 — covers the nights when home is more appealing than a table out. And the restaurant runs a buffet, with its price published on the blog; earlier buffet menus on the site go back years, so it is a format the kitchen knows well. For larger groups or families with divergent appetites, a buffet removes the hardest part of eating out together: agreeing on what to order.
The second half of the name earns its place. The Asian Store side sells staples by the sack and the kilo — mung beans have been advertised in stock, as have 25-kilogram bags of rice. In a small town, having those basics available locally matters to anyone who cooks the cuisine at home. It also tells you something about the people behind the restaurant: they understand the ingredients well enough to sell them.
The blog also records the smaller moments. In July 2016 the Methven Brownies visited the restaurant, and the team posted photos of the visit — a small thing, but the kind of thing a business only does when it sees itself as part of the town rather than just trading in it. That same instinct shows up in how the business communicates: menus and buffet prices are posted publicly, so nobody has to wonder what is on offer before they walk in.
A few practical notes. The most reliable source of current information is the restaurant's own blog at thaichillimethven.blogspot.com, where the dine-in menu, takeaway menu and buffet pricing are all posted as updates. Opening hours are not published there, so it is worth checking ahead if you are planning a specific dinner time. The address is 1-15 Forest Drive, Methven. Come hungry if you are doing the buffet, take the menu home as takeaway if you prefer, and consider leaving room in the boot for a bag of rice on the way out.