Cory Y.
Yelp
My wife and I are on a quest to search for the best pad thai in the area (or thai food in general). We thought we found it with our first try with Pinto Thai, but felt it was unfair to other restaurants, so we decided to give others a chance. After reading the reviews here, we decided to give it a try since it had some raving reviews. The interior looked nicely decorated. But sadly, they dont put as much effort into the food here as they did with their interior design. I ordered crispy pork belly with black rice as well as the paid thai, and oh boy....
Crispy Pork belly:
Not a traditional thai item, but I love pork belly and couldn't resist when I saw this on the menu. First, the amount of pork belly you get for what you pay (16.5 at the time) is just wrong. Second, the pieces are tiny compared to any other pork belly dishes I've ever been to. Third, these pieces were more hard than crispy. The softness usually associated with pork belly was no where to be found. Fourth, the sauce they used was overly salty. The black rice was perhaps the saving grace of this dish as it was cooked perfectly. Overall, I do not recommend ordering this dish, but I do recommend that it be renamed "garlic broccolini".
Pad Thai:
A bit sweeter than I'm used to, not as tangy, and oddly very wet. It feels like the wok wasn't hot enough, they didn't reduce the sauce enough, they soaked the noodles too long in water, or something like that. It didn't have the chewiness that pad thai is supposed to have. The saving grace was that the pork was cooked well. Overall, very generic tasting pad thai as far as most restaurants go, average at best.
And finally, the service was pretty poor. My waitress liked to socialize with the other waitresses behind the bar and never paid attention to anyone other than new customers looking to be seated. I sat with empty plates at my table for 15 minutes, despite trying to get her attention. When I decided to get up and leave, the waitress seemed surprise as to why I was getting up. The cleaning staff noticed I was ready to leave and got to servicing my table immediately as soon as I got up. The tip should go to the cleaning staff as they paid more attention to the customers than the wait staff.
TL,DR: This place did not meet expectation based on other yelp reviews. I don't know who's thai kitchen this is, but it sure ain't mine. I'm sticking to Pinto Thai.