Rosa's Thai Warren Street — Restaurant in London

According to the Rosa's Thai website, "Nailing that authentic recipe comes down to achieving the perfect balance between four key styles of ingredients: Salty, spicy, sour and sweet". I agree. Unfortunately although our starters (one classic platter and a vegetarian platter) were great and did indeed reflect this balance, the main courses failed royally to achieve this. It seems on this occasion, chef had a moment, tore up the rulebook, and decided that the 4 key styles of ingredients in Thai are sweet, sweeter, sweetest and sickly-sweet.

The curries were way too sweet, as was the belly pork wok dish - and most surprisingly of all, the Veg and Pulled Mushroom Pad Thai and our side dish of stir-fried broccoli. Everything was sweet to the point that we couldn't finish the food. I think the only unsweetened item was the rice, unless it was only slightly sweetened and therefore unnoticeable in comparison to the other food. A sticky toffee pudding would have tasted positively savoury alongside our dishes. I can only think that either the restaurant had a surplus of palm sugar that needed using up, or chef accidentally tripled-up on the sugar or syrup or whatever they use by mistake. Any of the classic, fragrant Thai flavours that may have been included in the dishes were completely swamped by sweetness to the point that they could not be tasted.

Perhaps we should have said something at the time, but it was starting to get late in the evening and we were all hungry, so we just ate what we could (the meat and rice mainly) as we didn't fancy waiting 20 minutes or so for the issue to be rectified with new food. This was not a cheap meal (not that we would have minded if the food had been decent), being for 4 people with drinks, starters, mains and sides. It was also a birthday celebration, which added to the disappointment. None of us are strangers to Thai food, so for all of us to have the same opinion about the level of sweetness tells us that something was not right. It was not just one dish, and this is not the opinion of just one person.

I don't know if this was a one-off mistake, but if this is the norm then may I suggest a name change to Rosa's Dessert Parlour. We left laughing about the situation, but this was possibly due to being hyped up on excess sugar. Any stars given in this review are purely for the swift service and the starters, if I could give zero stars for the main courses, I would. The amount of sugar in our dishes must have made a mockery of the calorie content listed for each item on the menu. Diabetics and those with precarious dental health beware!

Visited 15th...

I usually love to choose a Thai restaurant for a romantic date, because I find the decor always charming, and the mood is particularly relaxing thanks to the incredibly nice Thai wait staff. When I got to this place, I realized it's not always the case. They have serious staff issues. And no, none of them was Thai. I reserved a table for two, even leaving a note "please a romantic table :)." When we arrived, a blond waitress didn't even bother to find our reservation and hastily seated us at one of those eatery-like, depressing looking tables front street which were very different from the pictures I saw, and made me think "damn, the pictures were so deceiving." The table had only one set of silverware, the other one clearly been used by the previous customer... So the table had not been cleaned after being used. The two of us spent the next 20 minutes waiting for someone to take order, with just one fork, one napkin, and two dirty menus dropped like coins into a beggar's hat. After me calling with my eyes, another waitress mercifully accepted to take our order. Already dishearted by the bad experience, I noticed at the entrance some people entering and going downstairs. I peeked down, and I saw a bigger room, much nicer, so I went to the blond waitress and I asked why we weren't brought downstairs, since we booked the table and I even asked to give us a nice table. Her irritated answer was "sorry, after a certain time we don't seat downstairs anymore." When I told her that I literally just saw two clients going downstairs she said "they were going to the restroom." Of course she made that up on the spot, but I wanted to double check because the lie was too stupid to be real (I mean, who could they be so stupid to try to fool their own clients like that, instead of simply changing their table?). So I went downstairs and I saw a pristine, lovely table with the three people just arrived reading the menu... and a few more available just perfect for me. Of course we left with intention of...

Me and 4 other friends went here on Wednesday evening the service was absolutely appalling! i am only granting this review 1 star because the food tasted great as we walked in there was no smiles from any of the staff we all felt quite awkward they didn't offer us any water from our table and just left us sitting there i have never had this bad of service in my life we waited 20 minuets for our drinks order to be taken after asking twice as we couldn't be out for hours as my friend has stage 4 cancer and cant be out of the hospital too long without getting his vitals done. and then our food took 45 minuets to come out- it would have been fine if they let us know there was a wait but we was non the wiser and then we chased where our drinks was 3 times they took 60 minuets to come out we already had our food before hand !!! i asked our server what was her excuse for this as 2 of the drinks was bottles - not complicate cocktails and she was like i don't know and we asked for them to be at least discounted from the bill as this was such an inconvenience to us and she said no and still had the cheek to put the service charge on the bill we asked to take it off and she gave us a dirty look we was sat on table 33 and arrived at 19:40 and our check was opened at 20:17 and our servers name on the bill is abdu mashal

i hope this gets delt with effectively as I was never want anyone to experience this in any restaurant that I've worked in or run, its a shame as the food was amazing as this ruined our time with our not...