Thai Central Restaurant brings the familiar comforts of Thai cooking to Ruapehu Street in the middle of Taupō. Open seven days a week from 11.00am to 9.30pm, it covers the whole day — a sit-down lunch, an unhurried dinner, or a takeaway on the way home, with online ordering available through the restaurant's website.
The menu is a proper tour of the Thai repertoire. Starters run from chicken satay and fish cakes to curry puffs and prawns on toast, with a Mixed Entrée for anyone who wants a taste of everything. Soups include tom yum and tom kha in both entrée and main sizes, plus wonton, roast duck and stewed beef noodle soups. Four curries — green, red, yellow and panang — come with your choice of meat in coconut milk, alongside stir-fries like cashew chicken, Thai basil, fresh ginger and sweet and sour.
Noodle lovers are well covered with pad thai, pad see ew, lad nar and drunken noodles, while rice dishes range from crispy pork on rice to roast duck on rice. Thai salads, led by the herb-heavy larb chicken, round things out. Most mains are built around your choice of protein — chicken, pork, beef, crispy pork, prawn, seafood or duck — so the same dish can suit different tastes around the table.
On Ruapehu Street in the middle of Taupō, Thai Central Restaurant keeps a simple promise: the Thai classics, cooked properly, seven days a week. Doors open at 11.00am and the kitchen runs through to 9.30pm every night, so it works just as well for a quick lunch as it does for a relaxed dinner after a day around the lake. Dine in, grab a takeaway, or order online through the restaurant's website.
The starters list reads like a greatest-hits collection. Chicken satay comes off the grill with peanut sauce, while fish cakes, prawn cakes and prawns on toast arrive deep fried with sweet chilli sauce. There are spring rolls in both prawn and vegetable versions, curry puffs filled with chicken, potato, egg, carrot and onion, deep fried pork, chive and prawn dumplings, and Thai style marinated chicken wings. A plate of roti rounds out the list, and if choosing is too hard, the Mixed Entrée sorts it for you — one piece each of fish cake, curry puff, chicken satay and vegetable spring roll.
The soup section carries real weight. Tom yum — the Thai hot and sour soup built on lemongrass, lime leaves, coriander and mushrooms — and tom kha, its gentler coconut-milk cousin with galangal, both come in entrée and main sizes. Beyond those, wonton soup arrives with pork, prawn or chicken wontons and vegetables, while the noodle-soup side of the menu offers roast duck with rice noodles in chicken broth, or stewed beef with rice noodles in a rich beef broth.
Four curries anchor the menu: green, red, yellow and panang, each built on its own curry paste with your choice of meat and vegetables in coconut milk. And that choice is the theme of the whole menu — most dishes are built around your pick of protein, from chicken or pork at the base through to beef, crispy pork, prawn, seafood or duck, so one dish can be cooked several different ways for different tastes at the table.
The stir-fry range is just as broad. Thai basil stir fried brings seasonal vegetables and tofu together with sweet basil, garlic and chilli. Chicken cashew nut stir fried pairs roasted cashews with vegetables, pork garlic and pepper leans on a garlicky pepper sauce, and beef with oyster sauce adds mushrooms and onion. Fresh ginger stir fried, and sweet and sour with pineapple through the sauce, round out the selection.
The noodle dishes are the classics people come back for. Pad thai is the standard-bearer: popular Thai rice noodles with egg, tofu and bean sprouts, finished with crushed peanuts. Pad see ew tosses flat noodles with soya sauce and vegetables, lad nar serves them in a gravy, and drunken noodles combine rice noodles with chilli and sweet basil.
Rice dishes hold their own too — Thai fried rice and a tom yum fried rice with the hot and sour paste stirred through, plus crispy pork on rice, Thai chicken rice on its specially cooked rice, and roast duck on rice, all served with cucumber on the side. The salad section is where the herbs get loud: larb chicken mixes minced chicken with lemon dressing, red onion, mint leaves and ground roasted rice, while beef, seafood, calamari and vermicelli seafood salads each come dressed Thai style with seasonal vegetables.
Thai Central runs separate lunch and dinner menus, plus a dedicated takeaway menu, and the online ordering link on the website handles those evenings when cooking simply isn't happening. With seven-day opening from 11.00am to 9.30pm, it's a dependable option whether you're a local or just passing through Taupō.
You'll find the restaurant at 45 Ruapehu Street in Taupō Central. Phone 07 378 6610, email [email protected], or send a message through the contact form on the website if you'd rather write. Between the seven-day hours, the takeaway menu and online ordering, Thai Central makes it genuinely easy to eat Thai food in Taupō any night of the week.