Somtum Thai — Restaurant in England

I never do reviews, but it was honestly the worst customer service I've ever had!

We ordered the set menu, which was £23.50pp to eat in or £21.50pp take away. We wanted an evening out to celebrate so decided to eat in. We asked whether we could take the food away if we couldn't eat everything and we were told that it would not be a problem. The food was good but not the best Thai food I've ever had. There was lots left over and the man serving us put it in some take away boxes for us.

We heard lots of comments during our meal about how they preferred to be paid in cash etc. We were not told cash only at any point. My husband went out during our meal to find a cash point and withdraw £55 in cash to cover our meal (expecting just under £2 in change) in order to prevent awkwardness at the end.

The bill arrived and this is when it all got weird... Our bill arrived and there was no breakdown just a figure of almost £60 written on a slip of paper. We both only had 1 soft drink so we couldn't understand the large additional cost. We asked for a breakdown on the bill, thinking we had accidentally been charged for somebody else's drinks. But no we were advised that we were being charged £1 per plastic box to take the food away!!!!

I pointed out that we are already paying a lot extra to eat in (including the inflated costs of all items) and that if we had a takeaway at a much cheaper cost for the same food, they would have included the plastic trays in that cost. I searched Amazon and found you could purchase these boxes for £0.09 per box. Other diners in the restaurant made comments to us about where we could purchase our own cheaper food boxes from etc. I walked 10mins to a shop to buy food bags so we could take our food home without having to pay a crazy amount of money and having to go to the cash point again. While I was gone, I phoned my husband, which is when it all kicked off.

Other diners from other tables got involved and pointed out that it's a ridiculous charge and it should have been mentioned beforehand, at the point of ordering. The waiter was saying that the boxes are expensive and that they wouldn't buy them on Amazon because they don't know the quality. £1 per box covers the cost of the boxes they buy. At that point the waiter got frustrated, raised his voice and stormed off to fetch the boss (chef). She repeated the same things that the waiter said, saying that they need to cover their costs and we needed to pay for the plastic boxes they had given us, claiming that we were being unreasonable by questioning this. This is when several other people in the restaurant got involved, agreeing with us and pointing out that they had never seen such an approach taken elsewhere and saying how unfair it is to add such a charge on at the end without any communication about it at any point. People who were waiting for a take away also expressed their surprise and disbelief at what we were being asked to pay for. Eventually after loads of awkwardness and embarrassment he took it off the bill and we paid for the original expected amount with the £55 we had withdrawn from the cash point.

We were then asked if we wanted our change?!!!?! I mean do you seriously think we would leave a tip after all of that? I've never been anywhere without leaving a 10% tip, so ironically most of the plastic boxes would have been paid for through the tip if the poor customer service hadn't upset the...

I found my food tasty (chicken phanaeng curry) but my friends weren't impressed with theirs. The tod man khao pod were extremely oily. The pork phat kaphrao was supposed to be mince in a dark, thin sauce, but this one was chunks (not pork belly) in a light, gloopy sauce.

The jug of water we got given for the table was contaminated with hundreds of sesame seeds and other tiny bits of unidentified food! It literally looked like a snow globe. We had to ask to have it refilled.

My friend ordered a vegetarian green curry but found a piece of chicken in it. The owner offered to replace it, but my friend declined and assumed it would just be taken off the bill instead. This was never offered, so my friend had to ask for it to be taken off, which the owner eventually agreed to. A different friend went up to the counter to pay, at which point the owner lowered his voice and tried to get my friend to agree to taking £3 off the bill instead of the full price of the green curry. My friend who ordered the curry heard this and got up to tell him to take the whole dish off the bill. The owner said he didn't want to do that since we had taken the rest of the green curry to go in a doggy bag for the non-vegetarians in the group, so we simply gave it back to him to have it taken off the bill (I'm assuming it was just dumped in the bin, so I'm not sure what the point of that was).

The atmosphere was very awkward, the dining room was barren and the tables and chairs were very cramped. The bill was presented as simply a list of the prices of each dish/drink, but it didn't say what dish/drink each price correlated to, so we had to figure that out ourselves.

Altogether a very poor experience. I gave 2 stars for the taste of my chicken phanaeng curry, but I couldn't go higher than that because of all the other...

I hate leaving a negative review, and normally don't, but felt I had to, on this occasion. I was in a big hurry, and needed to get something to eat. I did explain that I was in a huge hurry, and that might have affected the cooking? I ordered a fried rice, and Thai style sweet and sour. The rice was almost uncooked, other than the "batching" that every outlet that serves rice, does. Barely warm, and very little evidence it had actually been fried. Being unfamiliar with Thai food, I'd expected a sweet & sour chicken to be a basic dish? To be fair, the portion was huge, but it contained lots of ingredients I wasn't expecting. Tomato, cucumber, pineapple (OK, that's understandable), but way too busy for my taste. As I said, I don't know Thai food, but this just seemed to be a hotch potch of stuff that only complicated the dish? I was hungry, and normally will scoff anything, but I'm sad to say, I...