ร้านอาหารต้นตาล สาขา 1 (โรงแรมแกรนด์ริเวอร์ไซด์) - Tontan Restaurant Grand Riverside — Restaurant in Phitsanulok Province

Great food, great location, nice looking view out of windows, nice internal layout, and nice ambience BUT...very poor and uninspired service.

Kitchen works well; food served shortly after order, arrives hot, tasty, appropriate portion size.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the service. While we were seated, it just was not that busy; leisurely pace of arriving and departing customers, however, empty tables were not cleared until a new patron arrived, resulting in them being seated at a table being bussed and cleaned. Pretty comic, if you ask me. Restaurant simply was not busy, and there was plenty of idle time for staff to clear tables...but it just did not happen, until someone showed up, or, in our case, we called the waitress over and asked for empty serving dishes to be removed.

At that point, an older lady showed up, not dressed in waitress' uniform, and bussed the empty serving dishes...to an adjacent, un-bussed and dirty table, littered with dishes.

We did order two different ice creams for dessert, but after waiting 10 minutes, gave up, and asked for the bill - 4 times. It was almost as though we were trapped in the restaurant.

I am fairly certain this restaurant is run by the world's laziest restaurant manager. I could be wrong, but in the event that I am incorrect, I have no doubt the manager is either in the top 3, possibly top 5, laziest managers on the face of this earth. Strike through that, please; substitute "universe" for "earth". I am convinvinced the manager believes they are being paid to breathe, and nothing more.

Could be a great restaurant and great dining experience, but not until someone puts a shoe up the...

If you are a tourist, avoid this place. Unfortunately, there is a wall of incommunicability between you and the staff that works there. For some inexplicable reason unknown to us, they did not bring the menu at the table and started bringing dishes that they had chosen without asking what we wanted. At the end of the meal, which was too much for what we wanted to eat, they decided that we should not have paid because, according to them, we belonged to who knows what organization. But we were there as normal customers, not tied to any organization. We had to insist on paying, and after our insistence and inability to explain ourselves, they made us pay an uneconomical bill for dishes that we had not even chosen. The staff is very kind and tries to do their best, but if they cannot communicate with foreign people and take initiatives without understanding the needs of the customers, this is a problem. For this reason I do not...

We ordered the Spicy Lemongrass Prawn Salad, a Pork Thai Omelette, some Fried Pork Belly, and some Pad-Sea-Eew for dinner. All of the food was very good. The flavors and quality of the food was fantastic. My one tiny complaint is that the pad sea eew was a little light of the flavor, but I did order "little spice", so I am somewhat to blame there. Also the quality of the noodles more than made up for it. I don't normally like flat rice noodles, but these ones were phenomenal. We also had some of the gelato, and it was fantastic as well. We ate the rum raisin and blueberry cheesecake flavors and they certainly tasted home made as advertised.

The service was also above and beyond. The staff was very attentive and helpful. If we are ever back in the area for more than a day, we will...