Northern Thai — Restaurant in Kitchener

I used to love this place and recommended it to everyone I knew. I haven't been in a few years so I was shocked to find the quality has dropped. I ordered takeout yesterday:

Golden Squid - smelled off and there were about 10 small pieces which wasn't worth the price, especially given their rotted state

Green Curry with seafood - tasted good albeit without any heat but it caused severe diarrhea later in the evening. Guessing the seafood was bad.

Pad Thai - okay but the chicken was way overcooked and very dry. They used to do this well when they were dine-in.

Pad-See-Iew - first Thai restaurant I have been to that used the same noodles for Pad-See-Iew as their Pad Thai. Got this with the beef and much like the Pad Thai, it was way overcooked and hard.

In general, the meal was primarily sweet with a few underlying flavors and few vegetables. Lots of meat but that was either overcooked or had already gone bad. I don't intend to come back again despite loving this place years ago. Something has changed and not for the better. Fortunately there are other Thai restaurants...

I don't usually write reviews for restaurants, but there are a couple of things about my experience with Northern Thai that I feel other potential customers should know.

My partner and I ordered food from Northern Thai on three occassions using an online delivery service. On each occasion we had requested that an ingredient be excluded from the dish, and indicated that if there was a problem with the instructions to call us. On the first two occasions, the instructions were ignored, and on the third we received a completely different dish than what we had ordered.

My partner has a sensitivity to the ingredient, but luckily in the first two cases we were able to remove it at home without issue. Nonetheless, it is concerning to me that explicit instructions regarding the preparation of the dish were completely ignored on three separate occasions. Given this, I would recommend those with food allergies be very wary if ordering from this restaurant, especially if the allergy is serious.

All that said, the food we did receive tasted fine and was...

This is one of those hidden gems, the kind of place where you walk in and don’t expect too much… sure, it’s dated, you won’t find them on instagram and things look like they haven’t changed in awhile, but for good reason. Staff were very kind, food came quick, and man was it delicious. We ordered the fresh rolls, mango chicken and pineapple curry with sides of rice. The rice was a little dry for my liking but perfect to my partners preference. The curry was amazing, and although it was more than enough food, because everything was so good, I had to order one of my classic favourites, tom yum soup - super flavourful with a little spicy kick! Because it was all so tasty, I’m tempted to order the same next time but I’m curious as to what other flavours to explore. Would definitely recommend for a low key, casual, great KW gem. Ps. Apparently they only do their specialty drinks in the...