Kinn Thai — Restaurant in Brisbane City

As a customer, I don’t normally complain. In fact, I can’t be bothered to leave comments on anything. But this time I felt that I have to.

On Friday I had dinner at the Kinn Thai. The restaurant is like one of those places that I go every once in a while. I guess I just love Thai food in general, but the fact that Kinn Thai locates in Westfield really is a plus for me – it’s almost my good old haunt.

But this time I was almost bullied at the restaurant. I had a voucher from Westfield which is valid for customers at various places, which included Kinn Thai. Basically you can use the voucher on any bill that exceeds $20 to get a $20 off. I intended to use the voucher when I paid, of course, knowing that my bill was over $100 and the voucher was valid. As soon as I showed the voucher, the waiter rudely (and loudly) said “NO! You can’t use this!” I was confused and I asked why. “You just can’t.” Well, at this point I was not going to be pleased with the answer, was I? So I was trapped in this “why” and “you just can’t” Q&A loop without a clear exit. So I demanded to talk to the manager, not knowing that there was a bigger loop waiting ahead of me.

“You can’t use it because it’s a bank holiday.”

“Well, nowhere on the voucher says that.”

Then he repeatedly claiming that it’s a house rule.

It’s just $20 for crying out loud. If I knew that the voucher was not going to be valid on bank holiday, I would have still eaten there anyway. I was just craving for some Thai food so I really didn’t care. But that’s not the point. The point was that you can’t just play this “my house my rule” game in front of your customers. Apparently, anyone knows that – except for the restaurant.

Because the manager started yelling at me, educating me with absurd restaurant economics and humiliating me for trying to use a pathetic $20 voucher.

“If everyone is using the voucher on a public holiday, we might as well just close the restaurant!”

“No one used the voucher today, why are you trying to take advantage on us?”

“Do you know if we take $20 off, we will make a loss?”

Hey, I wasn’t the one writing up the terms and conditions, was I? Do I have to ask your profit margin before I decide what to order? Am I a patron or a business consultant to you?

Give me a break. Go watch a YouTube video about contract law. Or I have a better idea. Go and be a referee for a rugby game. Tell the winning team that they can’t win because your house rule suddenly doesn’t work like the universal rule book. Whatever you do, do not be a...

I am never one to leave reviews for any businesses, but this experience we had last night was horrific. Firstly, lets delve into the first issue of the evening. I ordered a ‘Pad See Iw’ which included Chinese broccoli. The dish came out pretty quickly, with the waiter announcing ‘Pad see Iw without vegetables’. I responded ‘what you do you mean sorry?’ as I glanced over at a dish with the noodles, prawn and egg only. The waiter said I ordered noodles without the broccoli. I stated that I didn’t make any changes to the dish, just asked for prawns to be added. The waiter said she would go check with the kitchen. A few minutes later, she returned saying they had run out of the Chinese broccoli and I asked if they could add other vegetables instead. Yes, that’s right, I had to come up with the solution myself, without any acknowledgment on their behalf. At this point, I was being super patient, despite the lack of communication about an ingredient running out and making it seem like it was my problem. Anyway, the noodles come out for a third time with lettuce, and I kid you not, iceberg lettuce to be be specific. By the time I went to grab my fork, the waiter had already left, so I asked someone to else to come over. I asked the waiter if they had any other vegetables , as lettuce was ridiculous in my hot noodles. The waiter was quite rude and blunt but eventually said they had some vegetables. Within a few minutes, she returned with what looked like a doggie bowl/ child sized bowl of vegetables. I put my fork into it, and it was literally microwaved vegetables with no taste and very hard in texture. Throughout this whole experience, I was made to feel like I was a burden on them, despite the apparent stuff ups by them.

Moving along to the next issue, that is the prawns in my friend’s fried rice. The prawns were so undercooked, they could literally swim away if placed in some water. My friend ended up not eating any of her prawns in her dish. We hesitated to say anything about the prawns after the vegetable ordeal.

Apart from the nice restaurant atmosphere, I don’t recommend this...

Unfortunately, I had a rather bad experience here. I arrived on the labour day holiday evening. The wait for a table was quite long despite the restaurant being only about a third full and not particularly busy. Staff appeared to be more interested in rearranging items on tables and chatting to one another than in serving customers. I was eventually seated and ordered the San choy bow and the chilli jam crispy pork with vegetables. While the san choy bow was fine, the pork was rubbery, and rather than being in any way crisp, was hard and glassy in places almost to the point of risking injury to one's gums. The sauce was quite flavourful, however, and the vegetables were well cooked, tender but retaining some crunch. About two-thirds of the way through my meal, I got up to go to the toilet. I asked directions from one of the waitresses, but her English was poor, and it took a little while for her to eventually direct me to toilets located outside and some way from the restaurant. On my return from the toilets, one of the waitresses stopped me right outside the entry to the toilets as I was trying to find my way back. She accused me of having not paid, and I explained that I had been to the toilet and was trying to find my way back. She directed me back past a barrier around one of the other businesses, which was obscuring the restaurant from my view. On my return, I found that my meal had been removed and my table cleared. Another waitress came over and said that my table had been cleared by the waitress who had accused me of not paying because 'she didn't know'. To my amazement, she then asked if I wanted to take another seat and order dessert. I explained that, under the circumstances, I did not wish to do that. This rather unpleasant experience cost me $40, so I am unlikely to be returning to eat at Kinn again. No apology nor any recompense was offered at any time, by the way. I suggest to anyone considering dining here that there are many other far cheaper and better options in...