Mai Kitchen Restaurant — Restaurant in Adelaide

I dined in MaiKitchen yesterday night and also wanted to order a takeaway order for my partner back home. I ordered the prawn skewers DIY cold rolls for takeaway and explicitly pointed it out on the menu to the waiter. 10 minutes later only 2 prawn skewers come out in a takeaway box and I was obviously missing components of the DIY cold roll set - Vermicelli noodles, Herbs Vegetables and Cold rolls. When i raised it with the restaurant, one of the staff went back to check with the kitchen and the waiter who took my order. When she came back, she told me that they made a mistake but because their chef wanted to go home, they couldn’t pack the rest of the DIY cold roll set for me and that after discussing with her manager, I could receive the 2 prawn skewers complimentary. When i went up to make payment, i’ve realised that they did not take it out of the bill and when I questioned it, the lady doing our bill said that the waitress who initially told us that we could have it on the house was new and doesn’t know anything. She insisted that if I wanted to settle for the 2 prawn skewers to bring back to my partner for her dinner instead of the cold roll set, I need to pay for it. In the end, I gave the 2 prawn skewers back to them and my partner did not have any dinner as a result.

Firstly, how difficult is it to pack up some Vermicelli noodles, Herbs, Vegetables and Rice paper rolls and charge me $20.60 for it? There’s no cooking involved at all.

Secondly, I was still dining within your operating hours, how can your chef tell customers that he wants to go home and not want to prepare my food?

Thirdly, customer service is outrageous, these are basic principles. If even your “junior” staff can identify this, and try to help rectify the mistake, I don’t see how your staff doing my bill, who is supposedly more “senior” can’t understand this.

More to this, when I was dining in and finished the bottle of table water that was provided at my table, I asked one of your wait staff for another bottle of table water, which he forgot, this is completely understandable. Afterwards, when I reached over to a pre-set table (for the next day) to grab a bottle of water, he looked over, was visibly annoyed at what I did and muttered the f word under his breath.

Fourthly, don’t belittle your “junior” staff, telling customers that they are new and don’t know anything. Clearly, if they understand basic principles of customer service they are better than you. This should not be the way you should be trying to cover up for a mistake.

Fifthly, If you think that i’ve ordered wrong, I’ve dined at Mai Kitchen and ordered these cold roll sets before. I know what I should be expecting. This is someone’s dinner that you’re responsible for, and completely messed up.

Lastly, your food is average at best. I’m not one who usually leaves bad reviews for restaurants, because I understand that this hurts your business. But i believe that the underlying principle here is wrong and people should...

Thank you to all the staff who helped make tonight so wonderful. Tonight we celebrated my Grandma's 94th birthday and my nephew's 21st birthday.

The staff were attentive, friendly and efficient from beginning to end. I can honestly say that I have never had better service in any restaurant. They were at the table regularly, ensuring that all of us had all we wanted. They deserve a 5/5 for service.

The food was amazing. There are lots delicious vegan and non-vegan dishes. And wow, amazing value. The entrees were bigger than we expected and very tasty. The mains plates were piled high with scrumptious food, too much to eat. So much that we all took home large containers of food. Every meal was cooked beautifully. I'm not a vegan, the meats were tender, the rice was soft but not soggy, the food arrived at the table nice and hot. I'm told that the vegan meals were just as lovely. I was delighted that meals were brought out fairly close together. Many restaurants fail to accomplish this, so some diners finish before others have even been served. Mai Kitchen managed to have us all eating at the same time.

The restaurant is clean and nicely lit, not too bright, not too dark. The simple high-backed, wooden chairs look lovely with the wooden tables and floor. The feeling is simple elegance, and open space. Surprisingly for such a large space, and so many diners, it didn't feel noisy, or crowded.

After the main meal the staff surprised us with two special deserts, one vegan, one not, each with a lit candle, and led us in the Happy Birthday song. Grandma and my nephew were both delighted. They also report that the deserts were especially yummy.

We're already planning to hold another family...

Dine in for 5 on a busy night. It is very noisy that some of us find it quite hard to follow the conversation on the table.

The 5 of us shared a large claypot rice, combination crispy noodle, salted egg soft shell crab and deep fried sliced barramundi with tamarind sauce. Good portion of food served and reasonably priced.

The claypot rice is a bit cold on arrival. You don't get the sizzle that is usually associated with a claypot dish. And I think that it is also missing the burnt rice on the bottom. Not quite sure if this unique to Vietnamese claypot rice but the hk and malaysian version I'm used to usually has the burnt rice.

The combination crispy noodle I find lacking in sauce. It leaves too much of really crispy noodle and made it hard to share and serve.

The soft shell crab is a shocker. The batter is so thick u can barely taste the crab meat. The salted egg yolk taste is also barely there. I would definitely give it a skip.

The star of the night is definitely the barramundi. The light crispy batter that could soak up the sauce is to die for. It comes as a pleasant surprise given how big a contrast it is with the soft she crab batter.

All in all I'm unsure if the quality of food is due to the fact that they were so busy last night. Nevertheless the fish punched above its weight and...