Jinda Thai Restaurant — Restaurant in Albany

My wife and I may as well have lit $50 on fire.

The Tom Kha soup was the best thing we had, and it was just broth with coconut milk, onions, mushrooms, and shrimp. The shrimp tasted off (read old) and there was no evidence of any aromatics like cilantro or lime juice.

The Pineapple curry was lacking any sort of flavor (besides spicy), and I am pretty positive that the pineapple was canned. It's just strange to me to have something be the star of the dish, and have it come out of a can. The meat we had was tough, dry, and chewy.

The spring roles once again lacked any sort of fresh aromatics and flavor. It was literally just tofu and bagged spring salad mix. The peanut sauce was just peanut butter melted with sugar. No depth of flavor, just sweet.

Our drunken noodles once again lacked any sort of freshness to balance out the spice, and as a result the spice took over the noodles. I think there may have been one or two leaves of basil in this one. and the protein was also overdone.

We had heard so many good things about this restaurant, and were kind of excited to try it, but we're sorely let down. Everything that Thai food is known for (big flavors with things like lemongrass, cilantro, basil, lime juice that balance out the spice of the food) just wasn't there. We ended up throwing the food away and...

After reading such great reviews I was sorely disappointed. Thai food is one of my favorite cuisines, and I was fortunate enough to grow up in a city where various styles of wonderful Asian cuisine were readily available on every street corner.

Maybe all of these good reviews point to the fact that Albany simply doesn't have anything better as a point of reference.

One of the hallmarks of Thai cuisine is the aromatic fresh herbs and balance of flavors. Neither of these traits existed in any of the items we ordered. The salad rolls had zero flavor, the "Thai peanut sauce" that accompanied them tasted like peanut butter with added sugar. The pineapple curry and drunken noodles had spice, but literally nothing else to balance it. Where is the fresh basil? Cilantro? Lemongrass? Lime? Anything fresh? At all? I strongly suspect that the pineapple was from a can, the vegetables were overcooked and soggy, the meat was overcooked and dry...

We threw our entire $50 order away and ended up eating...

Update - I ordered the stir fried pepper steak. It was great. But we did go on Valentine's day for dinner and they were slammed. They had non-stop door dash orders which really slowed down their dine in service. It took over an hour to get our food after we ordered. And they ran out of Jasmine rice so we had to have brown rice which they told us as they brought out the rice. But really it was our fault. There is a reason I haven't gone out to dinner on Valentine's Day for years. Just a reminder to never eat out on Valentine's.

I ordered the crispy mango chicken. It wasn't my favorite. It was pretty salty and not very sweet and not much tang and the chicken was mostly bread. My daughter got the massaman curry. That was much better. And my wife got the drunken noodle which was also good. But I need to go back because there were so many things in the menu that I...