Mai Gai — Restaurant in Brisbane City

We had an early lunch here on Saturday the 13th Nov. It was not busy so we were seated promptly and served by a very nice young waiter. The wait however for our main meals took a bit of time considering there were only three other couples in the restaurant. We noticed that a diner that had come in after us was served their meals before us.

We had ordered the pork belly panang curry and pad Thai. The curry took about 35 mins to arrive and the pad Thai took 25 mins. So I'm eating my lunch while my partner has no food. I'm not sure if it was because the kitchen needed to do more prep work for the curry but it would have been nice to be informed.

The entree of roti and yellow curry was nice. But the roti was very crispy which made it hard to dip into the small bowl of curry which would just crumbled into flakes like a cracker would when it was folded. The curry was served cold which was quite the surprise. Not sure if it's suppose to be served cold or warm. Overall, it was a simple dish with a different take on the traditional roti. I liked the roti and flavour but would prefer a softer roti for this specific dish as you need to dip the roti in the curry.

The pad Thai and curry were delicious. The only downfall of the curry dish was the coconut rice. Traditionally, the coconut is cooked with the rice so the flavours are infused. However, the way the restaurant served it was cooked rice with a drizzle of coconut cream on top of the rice which was strange and did not taste nice. We did ask the waitress why the rice was made this way and she replied that it's because the coconut cream would burn in the rice cooker... Never heard of this explanation before.. How come all the other Thai restaurants can make proper delicious creamy coconut rice but you can't?!

Not sure if we will come back here. It was nice to try a new restaurant for a change but for good traditional Thai food we are happy to dine at other Thai restaurants who can serve and prepare proper coconut rice.

Hope this is good feedback for the chef to take into...

We went for dinner after seeing some good things about the restaurant online but we were so disappointed with the quality of the food especially for the price. When we first arrived another customer jumped in front of us as one of the staff was coming over. We know that they saw him jump in front and still proceeded to serve him first. We thought okay maybe that’s a lapse in judgement, the restaurant is pretty busy so we will let it slide… but We should have known…

The edamame came over cooked and still somehow cold? It was soggy and unevenly salted.

We ordered the popcorn chicken and we requested the mayonnaise come on a separate plate, we were told it comes separately and we didn’t need to worry about that. Only to have the popcorn chicken arrive on the same plate, touching the mayo. We thought okay maybe just a mistake on the kitchens part. But then we waited 20 minutes for 2 lemon lime bitters and we had already finished our entrees at that point.

We also ordered the Sticky pork belly, coconut rice and the Panang curry. The sticky pork belly sounded so good on the menu but what arrived was 4 pieces of dry pork with some sort of pub style garden salad with canned pineapple. The longer it sat at the table, the more confused we got as we dissected the dish. The panang curry was much too spicy to be enjoyable for a curry that’s meant to be pretty mild compared to other Thai curries. Lastly, the coconut rice was one of the worst things I’ve ever ordered at a restaurant. It’s as described “rice with coconut cream”. Thats literally it. It was so rogue we didn’t want to eat it but the curry needed rice. Plain rice would have been much nicer and we could have saved ourselves $1 and spent it on a couple of ice creams from maccas. We actually could have saved ourselves $113 and bought a cheeseburger happy meal and be much more satisfied with our meal.

After all was said and done we ended up with food poisoning. There’s no chance in the world we will return to...

had lunch at Mai Gai with some friends on 13th July. I had accidentally booked for 2 people instead of 3 and had emailed requesting the change prior as well, upon arriving to the restaurant I asked the server if I could have a table for three instead, he let out the biggest sigh like it was the biggest imposition before walking me through the almost empty restaurant. It was a particularly windy day and the curtains were blowing onto our table and it was very cold sitting there, we asked to move to another table and again, the major attitude from the server. Explaining that all the tables are reserved (note that nobody came and sat at said tables while we were there)..wouldn’t you move us, the people who are actually physically there and if those other parties turn up place them on the table we moved from?? Anyway, we weren’t made aware of the QR code to order so we sat for ages waiting for someone to take our order, by this point it was very evident there was only one server, (understaffed maybe?) and potentially that’s what contributed to the attitude. Unfortunately we couldn’t book the banquet on the QR code so had to do that with the server and when asked if we could order the wine through him too he said no it had to be through the QR code.. isn’t this meant to be a nice restaurant?? The food was fine, edamame a bit dry, popcorn chicken a bit fatty, as was the pork belly. Won’t...