Adam F.
Yelp
Was here about a month ago, for our annual arbitrary anniversary tradition of trying a new Thai place every year (started a few years ago when we happened to be at a Thai place for our anniversary, when I joked there were so many in Long Beach, we could try a new place every year and probably never run out.) We *were* going to finally get around to trying Chiang Rai, but it fell on a week-day this year, and with how busy they are and not taking reservations, we decided to go someplace a bit less hectic, and save that for a year it fell on a weekend. Thus, finally trying this place instead, which I'm always riding my bike past, but had never stopped at.
With so many options to choose from, I would give them 3 1/2 stars if I could (3 seems a bit low, but 4 seems a bit high - yet again, I wish we could give half stars). Partially this is was for service, as at least the day we were there, they only had two waitstaff covering the whole restaurant the majority of the time we were there (and it's a decent sized restaurant), so everything was just a little bit slower than you'd expect, other than the cocktail I ordered, which was *massively* slower than you'd expect. I had to ask a *bunch* of times on its status (apparently the only person trained for bartending, was in the back and not bartending), and I didn't end up getting it until we were almost done eating. At least they comped it at that point, though. (And other than it taking forever to get, which was clearly a temporary and solveable problem for them, it was a pretty solid lychee/rum cocktail - I can tell they used real lychee juice, not the fake flavored stuff.)
Food-wise, I'd say, if this weren't a city with an insane number of Thai places you could pick, I'd have no real complaints about it. Portions are a *bit* small for the price (especially for the curry), but not unreasonably. We tried the massaman curry (great, other than they also asked us what kind of rice we wanted with it, implying it was included, but actually charged us $3 extra for it, which we learned when we got the check - not the end of the world, but a bit of a pet peeve). And while we normally get pad se ew, when we saw "spicy crab noodles" on their menu, we had to try that instead (though my wife can't do spicy, so we got it 1/5 spicy, which as expected, was not spicy at all, other than the large and easily avoidable peppers. I obviously added hot sauce to my half.) Verdict on that one - it was a bit unexpectedly sweet? Tasty though. We were definitely not expecting to have to shuck our own crab though - it came with 4 decent sized claws, so you know it's real crab, but was also more work than we expected to put in, getting the meat out.
Overall, minor complaints, no serious ones - if the service had been a bit better, I'd say this would be one of the nicer Thai places for a date night. Definitely can find better value elsewhere, though. (And *that* said - I did also notice that they have a weekday lunch special that looks like it might be a notably better value, that I should maybe try sometime, that and to see if the issues with speed were a one-off.)
