Phuket Thai Restaurant

User Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

First off, this is a review for the new Phuket Thai near Ward center (Kamakee St). Secondly, I am no stranger of Thai food, and I have eaten at Phuket Thai at McCully Shopping Center with decent results. Normally I do not write reviews, but tonight's experience was indeed worth mentioning to the public and something I would actually wake up in the middle of the night to write about. Talk about an unpleasant experience.
The scene: meeting with old friends as I was coming back from the mainland, 5 adults, 1 child (3 year old) on a Sunday night, appears busy but not all tables are full.
The food:average. No, I am not a food snob. Their best dish was the market fish with no price attached, all other dishes were about $7-10. Now the fish was ok, fried fish, but all other appetizers (4) were ho hum and the main dishes 6 were really average. Now you may ask is this not the Phuket Thai that won all those Advertiser awards or whatever for best Honolulu Thai restaurant? Sure, I do no live in Honolulu full time anymore, but I highly doubt and hope this is not THE place for Thai! I really don't like Phad Thai but order it in a larger party as a gauge to the Thai restaurant. Average. Appetizers - calamari and the beef sticks were tender but again, average. Spring roll, egg roll, papaya salad - average. I suppose if I walk in at $8-10 appetizers they shouldn't be mind blowing. Main dishes, market fish as recommended which was pretty good, 2 curries, 1 soup, different rices, eggplant with beef- average.
The service: utterly horrible. Examples: reservations were made. Our table was ready but wasn't set and we had to wait 30 minutes before we could sit. The restaurant was busy but again, only 3/4 of the tables were being used, and this wasn't supposedly a fast churn Chinese restaurant with horrible service - at least 4 waiters were seen for a restaurant with maybe 20-25 tables at most. It did not appear the restaurant cared whether we were there or not. Next, water spill by my kid - someone sees it and says will be back later. We cleaned up most of it but of course now were missing most napkins/utensils. Our waiter appeared MIA and several other waiters had to take orders and do things for us - I had my water filled once at the very end of the meal. We even had to ask for dinner plates - our appetizer plates were not changed out and with our relatively large order, the food wasn't mixing well. Our food came out all pretty much the same time, after waiting 20 minutes to give the order, 20 minutes for the food, one appetizer came out for 10 minutes and then the rest of the food came all within the next 10 minutes. There wasn't much of a place to eat. Our fish nearly slid off the table on serving and the waiter had to come in to clean that up as well. I would say I eat out with some regularity and eat at many Asian restaurants - this is basically a typical Chinese restaurant - average to better than average food with horrible service. Our waiter kept saying this was the busiest night ever, but hey, with the restaurant operating not at capacity and no line outside, this is your job, deal with it.

Cost: $150 including tip, since my 3 year old didn't eat much, you can figure what the cost was per person, no alcohol or drinks were ordered except for table ice water. Parking: They will pay for 1 hour in the lot at back.

Summary: I had a good time with my friends, but the food was average for Thai food, and the service was exceptionally lacking. I would not recommend this place to anyone and will not eat here again.

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User Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

The food is good, service is somewhat slow (Thai style) not good for work lunch because the time it takes to order and get food.

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User Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

This place is horrible, the pad thai was disgusting, and the service was horrible, Thai sweet basil at Manoa Market place is so much better!!!

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