Pikul Thai

Pikul Thai Brings Real Thai Cooking to Newton, NJ

Newton went a long time with slim Thai options for a county seat, and that gap is exactly why Pikul Thai exists. The family behind the restaurant opened at 51 Ryerson Avenue, steps from downtown Newton, with a simple pitch: traditional recipes, fresh ingredients, and prices that let you come back on a weeknight. Early reviews suggest it landed. The Google rating sits at 4.8, and the word around Sussex County keeps coming back to balance, the thing Thai cooking lives or dies on, with sweet, sour, salty, and heat all pulling in the same direction.

What to Order

The menu runs deeper than most small-town Thai spots. All five classic curries are here (green, red, panang, yellow, and massaman), mostly $13 to $21 depending on protein. The noodle list covers pad thai, pad see ew, drunken noodles, and Singapore noodles, and the noodle soup section includes kao soi, the northern Thai curry noodle bowl that almost never turns up on menus this far into North Jersey. Specialties climb toward duck curry, spicy duck basil, tiger cry, and grilled jumbo shrimp. Regulars single out the Bangkok Spice chicken and the crunchy bowl, and more than one reviewer has called the pad thai the most authentic they’ve had outside Thailand. Desserts stay classic: mango sticky rice, fried ice cream, Thai coconut pudding.

Weekday Lunch Specials

Monday through Friday, lunch specials run $11 to $18 and come with soup of the day or a salad. For anyone working near the courthouse or running errands on Spring Street, it’s one of the better sit-down lunch values in town.

An Unlikely Spot Across from the High School

Part of Pikul Thai’s charm is that it isn’t where you’d expect a restaurant to be. Ryerson Avenue is a residential street, and the restaurant sits directly across from Newton High School, in the storefront longtime locals will remember as The Campus Shop and, more recently, Frankie’s Cafe. It’s the kind of spot you find because someone told you about it, not because you drove past it on Spring Street. That said, it’s still just a few minutes from downtown Newton and the Newton Green. Dine in, order pickup through the website, or get delivery through Grubhub. Vegan options are available, and the kitchen is used to feeding kids, which makes it an easy pick for families comparing places to eat in Newton. Posted hours are Monday through Saturday 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday 2 p.m. to 8 p.m., though the restaurant’s contact page lists slightly different weekday hours, so call ahead if timing is tight.

Pikul Thai is at 51 Ryerson Ave, Newton, NJ 07860, open seven days a week, and you can reach them at (862) 822-6669. Check pikulthainewton.com for current hours, the full menu, and online ordering.