Lim Ros Thai Cuisine

Lim Ros (https://limrosthairestaurant.com/) is a new Thai restaurant in Maitland that opened in the fall of 2024.  According to the website, “Lim Ros” means “to taste” in Thai, and there is plenty to taste on the menu.  It is located on the bottom floor of a fancy-looking apartment building on the corner of State Road 17-92 (aka Orlando Avenue, which turns into Mills Avenue as you head south) and Lake Avenue.  The interior of Lim Ros is modern, spacious, and upscale, with high ceilings and lots of natural light that make the dining room look even larger.  When we went for lunch a few weeks back, it wasn’t very busy, but I imagine it is poppin’ on Friday and Saturday nights.

My wife started her meal with a Thai iced tea, as she will at any Thai restaurant.  This one was sweet, creamy, slightly smoky, and refreshing, as they should be.

She also started with an order of summer rolls, her go-to appetizer at any Vietnamese restaurant we visit, so she wanted to try them on a Thai menu.  The soft rice paper wrappers held massive amounts of finely shredded lettuce, chewy rice vermicelli noodles, julienned carrots and cucumbers, Thai basil, and shrimp , but vegetarians and folks who keep kosher can also order them with tofu instead of shrimp.   That is peanut sauce on the top, even though it looks like it could have been cocktail sauce. 

I’m not a big summer roll guy, but she insisted I try half of one, and these were a lot more substantial than the usual summer rolls at Vietnamese restaurants.  Thicker.  Girthier, if you will.  Okay, that’s enough of that.

After being introduced to life-changing larb last year at Isan Zaap Thai Cafe, my favorite Thai restaurant in Orlando, I decided to try the larb gai here at Lim Ros.  It is a spicy, tangy, refreshing, cool salad made with ground chicken and various crunchy vegetables and fresh herbs: carrots, red onion, cilantro, mint, kaffir lime leaves, roasted rice powder, and served with cucumber slices for scooping and crisp iceberg lettuce leaves for making lettuce wraps.  Dig this gorgeous plating:

I must admit I preferred the taste and texture of the larb at Isan Zaap, which was made with ground pork and pork liver, as opposed to the ground chicken in this larb gai.  This one also seemed to have a lot of funkiness from fish sauce.  Trying to roll up some larb gai lettuce wraps was a messy business, and my fingers smelled like fish sauce for a day or two after this meal.

For entrees, we both ordered off the lunch menu, which has some nice specials.  Everything comes with a house seaweed soup and a crispy fried spring roll, so you get a filling meal with a couple bonus items for less than the price on the regular menu.

My wife defaulted to pad Thai, a safe choice for her because she isn’t into spicy food at all.  If the classic dish of rice noodles, eggs, bean sprouts, chives, peanuts, and pork sounds basic or unadventurous, I would disagree, because every restaurant’s pad Thai is different, and a truly great one can be a monumental discovery.  She said this one was just okay.  I tasted it, and she agreed with my criticism, that it lacked the acidic tang from citrus it needed to achieve perfect balance.  To be fair, that is my biggest complaint about most versions of pad Thai that I try. 

Since my go-to Thai dish, drunken noodles, wasn’t on either menu at Lim Ros, I decided to try something totally new (to me): Panang curry.  Here is the whole lunch platter:

This is the actual Panang curry, with Thai eggplant, Thai basil, kaffir lime leaf, chili, and pork (which I chose, but you can also choose chicken, tofu, or vegetables, or beef or shrimp for a $2 upcharge).   I wanted something spicy, and I would have to describe it as “medium hot,” but next time I will challenge myself with “Thai hot.”  I added all my rice to the bowl of curry and mixed it all up, so that alone dampened the heat level.   
I was surprised that the Thai eggplants were little, round, and green, not at all like the huge purple-black eggplants all of us are used to.  They looked like tiny round watermelons on the outside, and they had a texture similar to zucchini.

This was the house seaweed soup, which reminded me a lot of the standard miso soup served in Japanese restaurants, but with a delicious “roasted” flavor from the seaweed.  Umami?  Maybe your mommy.  There were tiny little white tofu cubes in there, along with all the seaweed, carrot, onions, and scallions.  It was a very nice soup, and it reminded me that I never order Thai soups, but I should branch out.

And the spring roll was a standard spring roll — no big surprises there — but you can’t go wrong with a spring roll!  I took the shredded cabbage and carrots home, mixed in with most of my larb gai, so I had a whole meal for the following day. 

We both thought Lim Ros was perfectly fine, but there are other Thai restaurants we like more, including another recent discovery I will be reviewing soon, so watch this space.  It’s a very nice restaurant and would probably be great for a date, a business lunch, or for bringing family and friends who are unfamiliar with Thai food and nervous about trying it.  If you want Thai and you’re already in Maitland or surrounding Fern Park to the north or Winter Park to the south, you can’t go wrong.  However, the next time my wife and I are craving Thai, I might drive farther in other directions.