Thai Chef's Restaurant Napier — Restaurant in Napier

I acknowledge It's a hard time to do business during Covid L3 Lockdown but on my recent order I had the most disappointing experience.

Takeaway orders online are not accepted til 4:30pm. I placed my order at 6pm, anticipating dinner at 7pm (thinking 1 hour is reasonable for 2 entrees and 2 mains). I wrote on their online order service "Pick Up 7pm ok!?" but upon placing order the website responds back with an ETA of 9pm (3 hrs!!) pick up.

Gave 15-20mins for the order to land, then tried to call them several times to check what time I could pick up. Phone number was off the hook / disconnected sound. Figured this was a lost cause but I had already paid online. Scrambled around at home to eat something anyway, with no certainty if they would even make my order.

Checked the online receipt but there were no live updates of order progress or pick up time. At around 8:15pm I got a phone call from them to query why I hadnt picked up my 7pm order when I hadnt received ANY confirmation that it would be ready by then. I wanted to cancel, but felt bad because I did want to support small local business, and could always eat it the next day?

Picked up around 8:40pm, asked for a credit or discount for the issue, was refused but told to keep receipt and they would give me 1 free dish next time, if they remember.

Reheated and ate it for lunch next day, but the food was definitely not up to the standard I used to enjoy, the springs rolls were okay, but the meat in the curry was really scrappy and noodles were below average, with barely any toppings.

Maybe these errors occured because of lockdown madness but the lack of communication and drop in quality wont have me returning...

I had high expectations for this restaurant seeing as it is an award winning restaurant. However I give it a 3.5. My spring rolls arrived soggy with only one small packet of sweet chilli sauce. I also think there should be 4 spring rolls instead of 3 in the entree. $8.50 for 3 is too much. The punnets of rice were small, I'm glad I had ordered a rice not knowing that the main tom yum soup includes a rice, this should be stated on the menu do people aren't paying more for rice, however I'm glad I ordered a second rice because one was not enough. Also the rice was watery and seemed old and not very hot. The soup flavour started off nice, however I was rather disappointed to only see there was mushroom and chicken inside no other veggies. As far as I know around Thailand and other nz Thai restaurants tom yum soup also has at least onion and tomato in it, some restaurants add carrot and broccoli as well but would've been nice to see it more colourful, I also noticed there's egg inside the soup which was weird please take it out. Never in my years of living in thailand and other Thai restaurants in NZ have I known egg to be inside a tomyum soup. Again the flavour was nice but the substance was not... Need to up the game. Add more variety of veggies in the soup. And definitely add more chicken it was like paying nearly $19 for liquid. To make it more value for money please make it 4 items in the appetizers not 3, make the punnets of rice larger at the same price. And add more veggies...

I've been wanting to visit the originals Thai Chef's for years. I worked at the New Plymouth restaurant whilst I was at high school. On Saturday my husband and I ate at the Napier restaurant. We were seated promptly and the waitresses were accommodating at first. However, we were neglected once we had ordered our entre. I had to call a waitress over to have our mains ordered. It wasn't all that busy in the restaurant when we were there but we could hear customers complaining about their takeaway orders taking too long. I ordered a tom yum gai which was delicious but our rice paper rolls came out with a chili sauce instead of the sweet clear sauce we're used to. Our mains came out late and my coconut rice was dry - I used to make this and it was always creamy. My husband's black pepper beef was very flavourful but like the rice, was dry. We've had that dish many times in NP and in Wellington and we love it because of the sauce. We didn't bother with a dessert. It was a disappointing visit. I expected fine authentic Thai food from the founding restaurant but instead was met with below-average takeaway shop inconsistency. Ups to the New Plymouth crew who never...