Siam Smiles Thai Restaurant — Restaurant in Manchester

Since the pandemic, restaurants have faced a number of difficulties which is why I’m loathed to leave negative reviews unless they’re deserved (yet constructive). I can see there are a number of very positive reviews of Siam Smiles so don’t just take it from me; your experience may be very different to that of the Saturday night experience me and my friends had.

There were quite a number of dishes unavailable. That’s to be expected but it seemed that around a half to two thirds of the dishes were not doable. While the member of staff who served us was apologetic of this, it’s somewhat embarrassing that the restaurant wouldn’t have ingredients as basic as pork and beef on a Saturday evening. There was also only one kind of smoothie available from a choice of around 5 or 6. But still we carried on and chose different dishes and looked forward to them.

The person serving kept bringing dishes to the wrong tables and not just ours. This is fine once or twice but it happened possibly five or six times in a small restaurant cafe. It was greeted with humour for the most part by guests but it got old after a while.

The person serving lied that it was a new menu that day. It’s bold to start a new menu from scratch with very few ingredients on a Saturday but lying about it is probably worse. When mentioned later to the chef, she also nodded to this.

After almost an hour we’d had our drinks and one starter of three. The restaurant was busy but with roughly ten tables it wasn’t frantically busy so it was hard to understand why this would be the case. After another ten minutes another table asked that if they’d not yet started their food they’d need to cancel. The other party had been there for around ten minutes less than us and we’d been there an hour at this point. We followed up by saying the same, to which the chef responded that she has to cook table by table. Given we’d ordered 50 minutes before I’d say we should have had our starters by that point so I don’t find that to be a fair comment or excuse.

In the end we had to leave and pay for the one starter and drinks we’d had and, despite telling the staff we had somewhere we need to be, she asked again if we wanted our food as ‘she’d be able to do it now’ which while we gave another polite ‘no’, actually made us feel worse about the experience because it ended up feeling like we had to push to get what we’d ordered, massively late.

I also don’t especially like how they have responded to the most recent one star review. It showed a lack of professionalism while also going off on some tangents that didn’t seem relevant to the review itself.

But I was to end on positives; they were apologetic, the restaurant’s atmosphere is nice without feeling overdone (it feels lovingly put together) and the starter we did receive was excellent (fish cakes).

Overall this was a poor experience that I wanted to be as great as some of the other reviews here and I hope I will again one day as I don’t want to write Siam Smiles off as this may very well have been a bad night. Try it for yourself as the food reviews are truly great; I just wish we’d been...

Found this place from reviews so we were excited to experience this place. But then found it had moved to The Great Northern Warehouse which we eventually found.

The place is outside the complex in a run down pokey building. The menu is posted outside so that was good. It was empty initially with a young person who was a waitress eating. When we eventually decided to go in, there was already a large table of people. We were not greeted and proceded to sit ourselves. We were given the menu a d asked if we wanted a drink. The young lady disappeared for a long while. I had to bring my attention to order. We were only ordering two dishes and she needed confirmation several times which I thought was strange. After a while ( The owner and young waitress were tending to the group and I think they were friends/family so conversing also). We felt forgotton. The meals eventually came. My Green tofu curry was luke warm and the rice was just dolloped on. My daughters noodle dish looked sparce with very little veggie. At no time did anyone come to check if we needed anything. I had to again ask the young lady for condiments and she fid not know wbat that was. I then asked for chillis which sge brought. The meal was not tasty and as we felt forgotton we decided to take our food home in a much better atmosphere. The young lady, probably a teenager, had no idea of waitressing or the food businezz. I noticed the owner/chef with the group and at no time came to check on us. I stood up to pay (as I was fed up to attract attention) and only the owner came to take money and asked if food waz alright. Not prepared for a proper receipt yet. Will not visit this dive again. Frankly thought it was rude. If she is trying to attract new customers she needs to not only improve on food quality, presentation but...

I brought my Thai mum here and I am so glad I did! I could tell it was going to be good just from looking at the menu and photos, but wow, if you want delicious, authentic Thai food, this is the place. There are so many incredible dishes on the menu that you just can’t get in a lot of other Thai restaurants, I can’t wait to come back and try more already! We came pretty early, about 4 o clock, and we were there till 7 because we loved it so much and were chatting away with Chef May. It did start getting pretty busy after 6 though (even on a Wednesday), so I would definitely recommend booking ahead! I find it a bit ridiculous that people are complaining about the issue of the toilet being round the corner, it’s really not far and I noticed that other restaurants and businesses in Deansgate Mews also have their own toilets in the same block. It’s hardly a sacrifice to eat delicious Thai food in a cute, casual setting in my opinion, unless you have mobility issues, but hey, each to their own. I also disagree with the complaints I’ve seen about pricing, considering chef May’s prices are in line with every other Thai restaurant I’ve been to (and I’ve been to many), plus her food is tasty, excellent quality, and are generous portions too. Myself and my mum both got one of our favourite noodle dishes - Kuai Tiew Moo Nam Tok, and the portion was huge! I also highly recommend the tod maan pla (thai fishcakes). Thank you chef May for a lovely visit and for chatting with us, we will...