What is Soi 4 Bangkok Eatery?
Soi 4 Bangkok Eatery is the Thai restaurant at 8787 N Scottsdale Road, Suite 104, in the Shops at Gainey Village, the southeast corner of Scottsdale Road and Doubletree Ranch Road in Gainey Ranch. It opened in November 2010, and it was not a local start-up. The owners, the Sirimongkolvit family, had been running Thai restaurants in Northern California since the late 1960s: Sweet Basil Thai in Berkeley, Basil Thai Restaurant and Bar and Basil Canteen in San Francisco, and the original Soi 4 in Oakland. The Scottsdale room was the group’s fifth, and its first outside the Bay Area.
The name explains the menu. “Soi” is the Thai word for a side street, the lanes that, in the family’s phrase, form the lifeline of Bangkok, and the food is a modern reading of what those streets serve: small, shareable plates instead of family-style platters, curry pastes ground in house, and dishes such as miang kum, kua kling pork shoulder and rack of lamb that most Valley Thai menus skip. In 2011 Todd Sirimongkolvit was executive chef of the whole collection, his sister Dannie Lum ran the Scottsdale kitchen, and her husband Kin Lum was managing partner; the site still lists Kin Lum for group dining in 2026.
The room is the other reason people remember it. Wendell Burnette Architects, which had just turned an old office building in Phoenix into St. Francis, converted a cavernous strip-mall bay into a high-ceilinged space with a bar along the entry wall, a long banquette piled with colored pillows, refurbished mid-century school chairs, mirrors on the block walls and a slat-wood staircase up to a mezzanine that now seats 40 for private dinners.
Who it is for: Gainey and McCormick Ranch neighbors who want Thai food with a real bar, Hyatt guests from across the road, and anyone who finds the Old Town Thai standbys too sweet. Phoenix New Times said within a month of opening that it had “clearly raised the bar for Thai food in the Valley.” Our verdict: fifteen years later it is still the best-run Thai dining room in Scottsdale, and the one worth a reservation.
How to eat at Soi 4
Order the curries. The dish the regulars name is Panang Neur, slow-braised beef short ribs in a kaffir-lime panang curry, $32.95. The posted menu also lists Kang Gai, the classic chicken curry in green, red or yellow, at $25.95; Kiow Wan Nuer Yang, green curry of charred beef, $26.95; Choo Chee Pla, grilled Atlantic salmon in a red-curry reduction, $30.95; Kang Pak, charcoal-grilled vegetables in green curry, $21.95; and the Fish Trap, mixed seafood in yellow curry, $37.95. Gai Satay, the grilled chicken skewers with peanut sauce, is $15.95. For contrast, Phoenix Magazine’s 2011 review priced pad thai at $12 and the red-curry catfish at $14; the kitchen is the same, the economy is not.
Respect the stars. Spice levels are marked on the menu and they mean it. In 2011 a server told Phoenix Magazine’s critic that the chef had refused to tone down the stir-fried pork and asparagus, because “a little pain adds to the pleasure.” Order medium the first time. The bar is the antidote: the opening list was built on Thai basil, fresh ginger and lychee, and New Times warned that craft cocktails were the one thing that could “jack up your bill considerably” compared with a neighborhood Thai place.
Timing. The website lists noon to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, closed Monday, with happy hour daily from 3 to 5. OpenTable and AAA still show an older schedule, lunch 11:30 to 2:30 on weekdays and dinner from 4; call (480) 778-1999 before an early or late visit. When the place opened, the “happier hours” ran 5 to 6:30 on weekdays with six $5 street snacks, green-curry roti and sweet-chili pork ribs among them, and New Times graded the room higher than the snacks. See our Scottsdale happy hour guide for the current competition.
Book ahead for six or more. Reservations are by phone or OpenTable, where the restaurant has run above 4.7 stars across more than 1,200 reviews, and parties of six must reserve. The mezzanine takes groups up to 40, from sit-down dinners to cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, and the restaurant advises booking holiday dates weeks out.
Getting there. The Gainey Village lot is free and large, but it fills on weekend mornings for the brunch crowd at Hash Kitchen next door and the health club at the other end; dinner parking is easy. The Grand Hyatt is directly across Doubletree Ranch Road, close enough to walk if the weather allows, and the restaurant is a ten-minute drive from Old Town up Scottsdale Road.
The Bay Area family that gave Gainey Ranch its Thai restaurant
Soi 4 arrived in the middle of what New Times called “boom times” for Thai food in the Valley, when, in Michele Laudig’s words, Thai restaurants were “nearly as ubiquitous as Mexican joints.” Most of them were homestyle rooms with hundred-item menus. The Siri Group came in with four decades of California restaurants, a short menu, a real bar and an architect. Laudig’s January 2011 review was unusually direct: the month-old restaurant was “already firing on all cylinders,” its keow wan roti was “one of the most delicious things I’ve eaten in ages,” and the rack of lamb was “elegantly done.” Phoenix Magazine’s July 2011 review called it “refreshingly non-stereotypical Thai” and praised the plating as fine-dining work.
The press also noticed the building. Burnette’s conversion of the strip bay, with its glowing staircase and mezzanine, was the first serious piece of restaurant architecture in a shopping center better known for its health club and boutiques. It helped establish the 2010s pattern at Gainey Village, where Hash Kitchen in 2015 and a run of patio restaurants turned the corner into the place the whole city comes for a weekend meal.
What the record does not say is as interesting as what it does. The restaurant’s site credits Arizona Republic Critic’s Choice awards for Best Thai from 2011 through 2014, and that is the last award it names; we found no major review of the Scottsdale room after that run, which is common for a restaurant that stopped being news and became a habit. Ownership stayed in the family, Kin Lum’s name is still on the group-dining page, and the site says a new chef, Chartchai “Bob” Vongsanikul, formerly of Roast Duck by Pa Ord in Los Angeles, has joined; we could not confirm that hire anywhere else, so treat it as the restaurant’s own account. The hours have shrunk to six days and a single noon-to-9 shift, which tells you the lunch trade is not what it was in 2011.
How it fits the city: Scottsdale’s Thai history runs from the Old Town standby Malee’s on Main Street to the strip-mall family rooms along Shea and Scottsdale Road, and Soi 4 is the only one that was built as a destination. It is to Thai food here what the McCormick Ranch bistros were to French: a neighborhood room with ambitions that outlasted the trend that produced it.
Honest assessment: Soi 4 is not cheap, and the prices have roughly doubled since the 2011 reviews, which is the main complaint we found. The food is still careful, the heat is still honest and the room is still the best-looking Thai restaurant in the state. Go for the short ribs and the mezzanine, treat happy hour as the value play, and do not expect the $12 pad thai that made its reputation.