Giggling Squid is a Thai restaurant with locations all over the UK, and I was lucky enough to visit the restaurant in Brighton on my holiday in January. There is also a Giggling Squid in Harborne, alongside most big cities across the country.

Giggling Squid serves authentic Thai food that leaves your mouth watering and your stomach full with satisfaction afterwards. The Brighton restaurant I visited was housed in an old fisherman’s cottage, in the iconic location of ‘The Lanes,’ which meant it was very small but had three floors – each floor only had around four or five tables. My partner and I were lucky enough to be on the bottom floor with the kitchen and bar right near us. Although the food being served was certainly more apt for dinner-time and high quality, the restaurant had more of a café style to it. However, I found it cute and authentic with chic, floral wallpaper décor behind us. 

The staff were exceedingly friendly, offering us multiple glasses of water and checking that our food was okay. For drinks, we went for a ‘Strawberry Thai Bella Bellini,’ which was a Thai take on the classic prosecco cocktail with a choice of fruit flavour; it was just the right mix of sweetness from the fruit and prosecco.  

For starters, I went for the ‘Spring Rolls’ which were filled with shredded vegetables and served with homemade sweet chilli sauce. This was priced at a reasonable £5.99 for a starter, and the rolls were exquisitely crispy and the flavours that hit my mouth from the roll, vegetables and sweet chilli sauce were divine. The starter comes with a little side salad too, so this is a really filling dish to have if you are hungry and know you will be waiting a while for the main course.

As a vegetarian, there were plenty of choices for me on the menu, as well as there being a selection of meat options for my partner too. 

As curry dishes do not come with rice, and my partner and I could not decide between curry and stir fry, we decided to order a curry each and then share rice and noodles so we got the best of both worlds. We both opted for ‘Thai Red Curry,’ mine with vegetables and my partner’s with chicken. Priced at £9.99 for a curry, £3 for ‘Egg Fried Rice’ and £5 for ‘Stir Fry Noodles,’ this restaurant is affordable but the quality of the food is beyond exceptional. 

While my curry was extremely spicy (which meant drinking four glasses of water in total), the sauce and the various vegetables were packed with palatable flavours, and it made my mouth water. The rice and noodles paired beautifully with the curry; the noodles felt greasy, but the good kind. We also had Roti on the side which was perfect for dipping into leftover curry sauce.

Overall, Giggling Squid is a delicious, authentic Thai restaurant that deserves more attention and I will definitely be trying the Harborne one as soon as I can.

Fancy looking at some more reviews? Check out these:

Restaurant Review: Manahatta 

Review: The Cod’s Scallops 

Review: The Vegan Kitchen