Ma Now Thai Kitchen — Restaurant in Port Coquitlam

This past Saturday I was craving a change of pace and a cuisine that I don't have too often. I had read lots of great reviews for Ma Now and I was excited to give it a try! We arrived at about 7:30 pm and my first impression of the place was that it seemed very simple, clean, and nicely decorated. We were greeted with the warm and aromatic smell of curry and it made us even hungrier! The staff were prompt in greeting us, taking our name and phone number, and seating us. They asked if we were okay with the digital menu and brought us tea right away.

After we ordered they brought plates and cutlery (for family style eating) and also brought a teapot so that we could refill our tea whenever we needed, which we appreciated. The jasmine tea was great and my boyfriend ordered a Chang beer, our first time trying a Thai beer. It was distinctly different than Western and Japanese beers we'd had, but it was quite light and tasty.

We ordered the O - Taro to start as it sounded unique and interesting. It came with a chili peanut type dipping sauce and it was a generous portion size. It was kind of like a lighter version of fries and we really enjoyed it. For the main meal we ordered the Craving Cashew Chicken at medium spice level and the Spicy Noodle (Kee Maow) with Tofu at the hot spice level.

The cashew chicken was very tasty and light with lots of fresh vegetables and it came with a side of white rice. The spicy noodles were the perfect level of spice, where they had a great kick and flavour, but it wasn't so spicy that the flavour was overshadowed and we weren't able to enjoy it. The tofu was also nice and well flavoured.

This was a short and sweet visit, but everything was on point for us. The waitress was very friendly and professional, but also prompt and proactive in her service (noticing our leftovers and asking if we needed boxes, asking right away if we needed the machine when we asked for the bill). The food was great, we managed to get two meals out of it with the leftovers so that was great value, and the bill was under $50 for two entrees, a beer, and an appetizer. We look forward to visiting again to try...

Edit Ok, I ordered from them again last night. I would never take advantage of a company for anything despite them offering in their previous response.

Ordering was a challenge, as I simply wanted 2 orders of vegetable red curry, and mild. No meat, no tofu. Just veggies. It's apparently not on the menu but should be a fairly easy request. I also ordered 2 orders of vegetable spring rolls and a vegetarian pad Thai.

I get my bag home and see that they've instead given me 2 salad rolls rather than what should have been several spring rolls.

I had 2 kids who don't like Thai food but love spring rolls waiting for this treat and I discover I have nothing to offer them. It was faster and easier to just order them some pizza rather than deal with the restaurant again.

The place is nice and the people are friendly, and obviously had I wanted inside we'd have been able to fix the mistake quickly.

I wanted to give them another chance due to how people seem to love their food, but I'm 2 for 2 having a disaster with them. The previous order had what appeared to be over an inch of metal in the food, which thankfully my wife noticed before putting it in her mouth.

I definitely won't try again.

Original review:

Food was decent, though bland. Spice/ heat was there even for mild. Rice was excellent.

Portions were a good size and spring rolls are larger so we had a little too much food. Vegetation red curry isn't an option so it was a special order. Disappointed it was all bamboo shoots and baby corn, very little peppers or any other vegetables. I guess that's our fault for ordering outside the menu parameters. Normall restaurants use peppers etc, vegetables people actually want to eat. Chicken curries were good.

The thing that soured us was that in that vegetable curry, there was a piece of coiled up wire/ metal, about 1.5 inches long and about 2 mms wide. Possibly it came from the top of a can that had been opened? Thankfully she saw it before it went into her mouth. Had that happened, the restaurant would have heard from us, but we aren't angling for free food or a discount etc so we...

Not my first time at this Restaurant, and the first time was relatively good. However, didn't have a great experience most recently. Perhaps it was an off night?

Overall they are practicing proper covid restrictions, so the the restaurant was not overly busy. In fact, we were the first ones there for dinner service on this evening. We ordered four dishes.

Tom Yum Soup: Decent tasting, a decent amount of seafood inside.

Green Curry : Good green curry, tasted and smelled really good. Certainly brings me back to Thailand.

Pad See Ew : Not quite sure why today, but this was incredibly bland and I think the chef forgot to season this dish.

Appetizer Platter: Well, the waitress either didn't write it down, or didn't follow up even though she did confirm our dishes with us prior to leaving the table after writing down our order.

A few other things about the service this evening: We were not done our soup, and the waitress attempted to take the soup away (I guess from her perspective we had moved on to another dish, but we wanted to leave some until after.) While my partner and I were speaking, the waitress came by again to offer takeout boxes for our food, though we were not finished eating. (Once again, I guess her perspective is that since we had slowed down we were not going to be eating any further?) Once again, she also forgot our first dish (Appetizer platter) that we ordered, even though she took the order while we were the only one around, and she had checked in on us multiple times - I didn't wind up mentioning this to her until after we had paid the bill, as I just did want to see if she remembered , and we were already quite full.

Overly, not a great experience in terms of service and slightly bland food this time. We felt really rushed, like they wanted us to get out of the restaurant even though there were no other parties waiting...