How spicy is Thai food really? A guide to ordering your heat
10 July 2026 · 2 min read · Rim Thang Thai, Glenelg
It's the question we hear more than any other: 'how spicy is that?' Fair enough — nobody wants to gamble a whole dinner on it. The honest answer is that Thai food covers the full range. Some dishes are built around chilli. Others barely see it — and a few of the most famous ones, like Pad Thai, are actually mild by tradition. And because we make every dish to order at 39 Jetty Rd, the final say is always yours.
Here's how to order with confidence.
Mild, medium or Thai hot
Every wok dish, curry and soup we make starts when you order it, which means the chilli goes in by hand, to your call. Mild keeps the flavour and drops the burn. Medium is where most people land — warm enough to notice, not enough to sweat. Thai hot is how the kitchen eats, and we offer it as a warning as much as an option.
If you're unsure, start medium. You can always go hotter next visit; there's no walking back a Thai-hot Tom Yum.
One rescue tip worth knowing: chilli heat dissolves in fat, not water. If a dish gets ahead of you, plain jasmine rice or a spoonful of a coconut-milk dish will settle it far faster than any amount of water will.
How spicy is Thai green curry?
Green curry catches people out. The colour reads gentle, but the paste is made with green chillies, and in Thailand it's often the hottest curry on the table — hotter than red, despite how it looks. The coconut milk rounds the edges without switching the heat off. Ours is cooked to order like everything else, so just tell us where you want it; the fragrance of the paste survives at any level.
It sits alongside the choo chee and the slow-cooked Panang beef in our curries section — both of those lean spicy in their traditional form too, and both take the same instruction.
Dishes that carry chilli
A few of ours are spicy by design — the heat isn't a garnish, it's the point:
- Tom Yum soup — hot and sour is the whole idea; the chilli jam brings depth along with the burn.
- Pad Cha — our sizzling stir-fry with green peppercorn and finger root, fiery in its traditional form.
- Pad Kee Mao (drunken noodles) — thick rice noodles with basil and green peppercorn, usually ordered with a kick.
Naturally gentle orders
Plenty of the menu carries little heat at all. Tom Kha is Tom Yum's calm sibling — the same lemongrass, galangal and kaffir lime, but settled into a coconut-milk broth. The cashew nut stir-fry in our stir-fried section is savoury and crunchy rather than hot. Pad Thai and Pad See Ew are mild by tradition, and the egg fried rice has no chilli in it at all.
So bring the friend who swears they can't do Thai food. Between the full menu and a kitchen that cooks each plate to order, there's a dinner here for every tolerance — from none to Thai hot. And if you're ordering for a mixed table, ring us on 0426 359 311 and we'll help you steer it.