Muang Thai Pukekohe Restaurant — Restaurant in Franklin

We thoroughly enjoyed our family dinner experience at Muang. We've been back again and it was consistently great.

Food we got are: Duck yellow curry - Our favourite dish on the table. The duck was very tender and the vegetables compliment it well. The curry is mild and had a sweet fragrance, it was flavoured very well and presented in a cute duck plate. Macadamia chicken - Chicken was very crispy and the sauce was tangy, sweet and tasty. The sprinkled crushed macadamias added a really nice flavour. Mango chicken - Very subtle mango sweetness, chicken was tender. I thought it tasted similar to the yellow curry but a bit sweeter. Coconut rice - (not included in the dishes) super nice coconut fragrance and flavour without being overpowering. The rice was cooked perfectly and had shredded coconut on top. Fried ice cream - I loved this dessert, the fried coating outside tasted like a very crispy, hot donut while the vanilla ice cream was still cold inside. It came with whipped cream, sprinkles and condensed milk drizzled over it. Banana fritters - Also amazing, fritters were freshly hot and paired so well with the ice cream. Super cute and comforting dish.

Overall amazing experience; we'll definitely be going back again and recommending others to try Muang. On top of all this, the staff were extremely accommodating and polite. We didn't book a table but they were able to offer us one. The waiter was also very patient when one of us was being a bit indecisive on which dish to order and didn't understand the explanation of the differences between the curries. He kindly repeated a few times for us and did not appear annoyed at all.

Their menu was also quite expansive, and with plenty of options so it was difficult choosing what to order. The portions were big as they all seem to be sharing plates like at a Chinese restaurant. There was quite a lot of rice that they give for each order, we shared one plate between 2 people.

Love this place, can't wait to try their other dishes as all of...

Ordered items: Chicken larb, beef massaman and pad thai.

The chicken larb was average. It was missing the freshness one would expect from a good larb. Fresh herbs the crunch of toasted rice were absent.

Beef massaman - The beef was tough due to overcooking (trust me, I know these things)... The lack of any substantial body or seasoning made this dish further underwhelming, especially when considering the expectations set by previous experiences of massaman.

The pad thai lacked flavour of any kind. Unfortunately, there appeared to be no evidence of tamarind (flavour or colour) in this sad representation of a pad thai. I genuinely wish I could give you more details about this dish, but it's underwhelming nature has forced me to erase as much of it as possible from my mind. I don't remember whether I got a wedge of lemon or lime with it. I don't remember whether it contained little tasty bits of scrambled egg (usually I remember tasty bits of scrambled egg), nor do I remember whether the mung beans were just absent or overcooked and therefore disguised by the texture of the noodles. I just remember the expectations set by the promising garnish sprinkle of cashew nuts. The same expectations which were instantly lowered, upon spotting the first sad and rubbery "prawn".

To be honest, I could easily have been happy with a vegetarian version of this dish, or forgoing prawns, and even swapping cashews for peanuts, if it delivered the deliciousness of even a half-decent pad thai.

Sad and confused, I decided to stop eating and made myself a grilled cheese sandwich and dreading eating the leftovers the following day.

I hope this was just an outlier in what appear to be great experiences (judging by other reviews) at this establishment. I hope this is just a result of teething issues related to the national pandemic response and will aim to try this establishment again...

I have visited this restaurant recently after strong recommendation from a friend who is Thai (lived nearby in Karaka). I am from Auckland and was visiting therefore went for a dinner with my family before leaving back for Auckland. I noticed that the food is served reasonably fast, and very warm welcome. However when the peak hours started, just a strange feeling we received, as we are asians - our attention and needs are soon being neglected, especially I can see the waiters and main captain are trying so hard to impress the fill out crowd of customers on Saturday evening whom majority are kiwis. In conclusion i hope they can improve the customer service better, we even said goodbye to the person in the front counter, but just too busy. Hopefully we are not neglected because we are asians, if not that will be a main issue the managers have to look at in improving his team's mentality. We were happy how the service began- it's not how they begin/start the race, but how they finished as well. But overall good food - hopefully the next time we come back we will experience better...