Galae Thai — Restaurant in Alexandria

Came here for lunch on a cold and dreary day. It's located by the Hoffman theater. The ambiance and decor inside was warm and cute, it would be a cute date night spot.

Maybe because of the weather there was lunchtime rush - all tables were full and they only had two servers for the entire restaurant. As a result, we waited 20 mins to get glasses of water, 40 minutes for the gyoza that comes with the lunch entrees (they were somehow out of miso soup so we each got two gyoza), and then our food came 5 mins later. We scarfed everything down in ten mins because lunch hour was basically over. Not great when you have limited time for lunch, so a star was knocked off for that. Additionally, service was really lacking, but given the short staffing, I can forgive it.

Onto the food - it's hard to go wrong with Thai food, but somehow the food here is utterly mediocre (or maybe even subpar) and very much on the salty side. I've gotten drunken noodles here before, and they weren't satisfactory at that time (noodles weren't at optimal texture, too salty with not much other flavor, very skimpy with meat). This time around I got crispy chicken ka prao. It was basically the kind of chicken you get with sweet and sour chicken, sautéed in a very salty sauce with bell peppers and string beans. I found the portion of chicken to be skimpy yet again, and not worth the $12 I paid for it.

All in all, great ambiance, poor service, utterly...

Had been there several times in the past but it had been a while. The appetizers were the only good party of the night unfortunately. The wait to even be greeted by a waiter once seated was horrible. The host ended up coming over to take our order after we questioned why we had yet to see a waiter after 15-20 min. We decided to stay because we were already there. As I said before, the appetizers were good. The entree of pineapple fried rice was extremely disappointing. The shrimp had absolutely no seasoning, not even salt. The rice had obviously started to burn, you could smell and taste it. The rice had no seasoning either. The only palatable part were the cashews. Hoping I could save the night with a dessert, I ordered the Galae custard. Also turned out completely bland. I left very dissatisfied with the food especially talking into account what I had come to expect of this establishment and even more so having to pay what I did for it. Just won't go back is...

This was my first and my last time eating here. The dumplings (Kanom Jeeb) were in a plastic container and also wrapped in plastic with the toppings added on top of the plastic wrapper — really? They are much smaller than what I’ve eaten elsewhere, and are pork heavy. I took one bite of one dumpling and did not find it tasteful. Then I tried the soup (Tom Kha Gai). The chicken breast pieces were thin and overcooked so I plucked them out of the soup. Okay, one more dish to taste — the noodles. The Drunken Noodles would have been good if they were not too soft and stuck together. I ended up pouring the soup over the noodles and eating it as one meal. Actually for as much as I paid for this meal it was not a good value — inflation size portions 😉. When I picked up the meal there was no one in the restaurant eating so I was hopeful it meant I received a well-cooked meal, which my...