Mae Thai Restaurante — Restaurant in Playa del Carmen

The food was really good but the service was the worst I have ever received in my life. We waited at the entrance for a good ten minutes with staff seeing us but never meeting our eye, and there were empty tables. Finally a petite waitress removed the entrance chain and pointed us to a table directly beside the entrance and when I pointed to another open table that seated 4 we were told no, it was for 4. She did not smile once when seating is not when she brought the menu or when she took our order, just looked miserable the entire time. We were given our food, enjoyed it and then after another 20 minutes of waiting and trying to get our servers attention and being ignored, while 2 other tables seated before us had already left, flagged another server down and asked for our bill. Another 10 minutes later, a full half hour after finishing our meal, a young man brought our bill and the cc machine to our table and all the English he seemed to know was "tip?" I furiously responded no! We were in the residence apartments directly across the street for several days and my Son stays on until March 11th. I said I would never go there again due to the service, no matter how good the food was! He said he would try it again and did several days later, waiting a long time at the entrance, just to get take out. He then went back a third time and they simply said no, to his request for take out. He has since decided to get his Thai food from another place, that wants his patronage and money, who don't appear to hate their jobs and know absolutely zero about customer service. Obviously this restaurant counts on all the tourist turn over to bring in people for the first time who are unaware of the poor service. We went to every restaurant in the area and received excellent food and service and noticed that this restaurant was most often the least busy and closed the earliest....

Post update October 2023: they didn’t have entree rolls this time either.

The prices have gone up since the first time I went, and the last time I was there.

The food can get wet if it rains. The umbrellas don’t prevent the food from getting wet if it rains, since they are made from fabric and now you can’t sit inside.

This time I got a green curry. It was very good. It’s my favorite.

—————————————————————-

Their vegan options are good 🌱 Portions are also good. I particularly like the green and yellow currys with tofu. They come with plain white rice on the side, and cost around $230 MXN each. The Vegan Pad Thai lacked some flavor when I tried it. Beverages are somewhat expensive in my opinion.

The last time I was there I didn’t get any courtesy veggie rolls because I got there at 10 pm and they say they stop serving them at 9:30 pm. Also, some customers were smoking marihuana beside me, and being very loud. They seemed drunk too. The waiter said he couldn’t do anything about it. It was very uncomfortable.

If it seems like it’ll rain, make sure to sit inside because the umbrellas on top of the tables get wet, and eventually water starts leaking over your food.

This is a place to go if you enjoy eating spicy food. Their spicy...

This would be a 4 star based on the fact this is PDC but i had to keep a consistent rating. I thought things were going to be terrible after the starters - these were dire and clearly straight from the freezer (some wonton thing, a steamed dumpling thing, spring rolls, chichekn satay, a fried shrimp) and definitely needed at least a minute or two more of cooking.

Things were rescued with the mains - green chicken curry and papaya salad were acceptable (but despite asking for "thai hot" this was western-level chilli exposure) but the fried grouper and basil stir fry with tofu (i think a pad prik sot if i remember correctly) were really quite good. The veg and the basil in the stir fry were really juicy and fresh and you could tell they had been kissing a searingly hot wok - just as it should be.

Then dessert came and this really brought it down again. coconut flan so dense and lacking in any coconut flavour. sticky rice and mango made with bad quality sticky rice, ruining the lovely mango and warm coconut milk. If it had just been the coconut milk and a bowl of mango that would have actually...