Boi Boi — Restaurant in Amsterdam

Edit: that's a vey long response by the owner. I was pretty clear about what we ordered (I think it was January 3 if it helps any): a Laarb beef (Laarb Neua, which normally costs around 12.50 not 16.50 like here), and a red curry (I can only assume it was a Neua pad ped but impossible to know because you don't use proper food names, going rate normally also between 12 and 14 euros, not 16.50 like here). Both were overpriced for takeout in my opinion, these are not regular rates. As for names: any Thai restaurant, with or without buddhas, uses (in addition to translated names), standard Thai names for food. It just helps one to understand what you order. You don't see Mc Donalds calling their hamburgers "white buns with beef in between". And yes, we thought both dishes were average. As I wrote, nothing was really wrong, but nothing was exceptional either. If that's a shout out so be it, but reviews are intended to share opinions. Just my 2 cts. Cheers and the best of luck. There are obviously enough people that like your restaurant so the fact that I wasn't as thrilled should not impact your business too much, I'm just sharing my opinion.

Original post: Had take-away food. I ordered over the phone, the (apparently non-Thai waitress) did not seem to know the Thai names for food, e.g. she thought they did not have a Yam Neua or Laarb Neua, but after some chat it turned out they did have a Laarb beef salad. Interesting (Laarb Neua is Thai for a certain type of beef salad and what I ordered turned out to be a Laarb Neua after all). The food was good but not great, especially given the pricing. We paid close to 50 euros for a red curry, a laarb neua and a mix of starters + some extra rice. For that amount I had expected us to have leftovers, but we could easily eat everything among the two of us. The main dishes were 16.50 each, which I thought was a little overpriced, even more given the fact that this was takeout. And charging another 2,50 for some extra rice I thought was overdoing it, especially when the main dishes are already overpriced. I had expected something special given the rave reviews this place is getting, but the food was just OK. Not bad, but not great either. The rice did not seem fresh, some parts were even dried out and had turned a little brownish-yellow here and there. I've had better Thai food at lower prices elsewhere in town. We won't be coming back here anytime soon. Too bad since they are really close...

Bad experience, and even worse after owner's response. In reply to your response: why do you try to warp and discredit reviews with fabrications? How does that help anyone? Do you think that everything that goes wrong is someone else's fault? This is perhaps why your food and your service were bad? You should want to improve to actually get good at something. Other negative reviews have had similar strange responses, it seems. What I suggest you do with a complaint is see if you can improve your service with it, not spend energy on fabricating things to pretend things didn't go wrong. I'm sorry you can't appreciate constructive feedback, but that was already clear on the evening itself.

Original review further down.

In detail in response: We didn't finish our plates, everything was sent back half finished. We didn't order champagne but spumante but you tried to sell us the much more expensive champagne instead, of course we declined. The coconut soup was only sweet coconut juice, that was the whole complaint. We indicated all dishes tasted bad (like fish) because of the old canned bamboo, nothing to do with tamarind. And so on.

Original review:

We love Thai food and go out of our way to get to the good stuff. We read good reviews here so we were excited. But we were very disappointed. We will definitely not return here, there's far better places around with better food, better service, and better prices.

It started with two drink options not being there, being forced to get more expensive drinks. Then both of our soups were bland, one just sweet coconut and the other almost like spicy water. The Pad Thai chicken had a fishy taste, and so did the green curry with duck. We didn't finish any dish. The fried rice came so late we had already finished eating and took it home. The staff didn't respond to our hints that we didn't like it.

Only after playing for it all (it's not a cheap place) did someone else bother to ask us if we enjoyed our dinner. We took the time to explain, we received a sorry but nothing else. So, we overpaid for bad food, with bad service. Too bad, we really wanted to like this place. Hope you can...

I'll share an experience I had there on new years eve. A group of friends and I sat down for a meal, everything was ordered off the vegan menu because most of us are. My friends meal had been made with egg and she only noticed after eating part of the meal and so she went to the waitress to explain that this situation was very unpleasant as she had not eaten eggs for a very long time and she felt sick from the thought. The chef came out and started to argue that it wasn't he's fault as he made what was on the order, my friend and the chef started to argue and the chef started raising he's voice at my (small female)friend. The manager came and had to physically move the chef as he seemed to be getting more aggravated. The manager then proceed to argue with my friend instead of just accepting that someone had made a mistake, he seemed more interesting in being right than correcting the situation.

We then decided to take our food to go and remove ourselves from this unpleasant situation. The chef then threw the take away boxes at us who weren't even part of the argument and said we had to fill the boxes ourselves, he continued to shout and swear at us. The manager didn't once try to calm the situation, he ended up saying that our group had ruined the night for everyone.

It was quite unbelievable to be in such a negative situation and we would recommend that people not support an establishment that treats it's customers with such...