Mai Thai Restaurant — Restaurant in Alexandria

Beware: We were racially profiled at this location and it completely ruined our dinner plans. We won’t be going back to this place or the sister location in DC Thaiphoon. Let me tell you why…

During our experience, I asked the hostess if we could sit outside when we got to the restaurant. She told me all the outdoor seating was reservation only and they were completely booked. She asked us to sit in the corner next to extra restaurant chairs and baby strollers as she happily sat other customers who walked up and requested outdoor seating. It was over 30 minutes when we got out take out food and when I realized that she was not marking names off a list or anything, she was just seating people outside as they requested. She had just seated a couple outside and when she came back I asked her if they had reservations. She said “yes, they had reservations for outside”. As we were walking out, I politely asked the people that had just been seated if they had reservations. They responded no and that in fact that whole side of the patio was for no reservations seating. I was in disbelief. The hostess frantically ran out and apologized and asked us if we wanted to be seated. I asked her why she lied to us and she said sorry she did not understand me when I asked if they had reservations. I asked to speak to the manager immediately and she said that he was very busy with a large party. Not my problem, I will wait. She asked us to wait outside the restaurant and I said no. When the manager arrived, he said she most likely did not understand us and she was not regular staff at the restaurant. This woman understood us and all the other patrons. There was no excuse for this behavior. She had taken one look at us and decided not to seat us. He apologized and said he would give us a discount next time. I calmly told him how disrespectful and wrong this experience was, after all, she is the first face welcoming patrons to the restaurant! I explained how excited I was that they were bustling back after the pandemic and how I was looking forward to eating there before today. I shared that this was the last restaurant a friend and I had dined in before everything was shut down last year, and that they had lost me as a customer after this experience, please refund our money immediately.

The manager scurried off and refunded our money, but nothing can refund the time we lost or remove this horrible experience. I have been going to this location and the sister location Thaiphoon on S street NW in Dc for years. I am sad that I will no longer be supporting this business but I cannot support a business that treats it’s customers this way. To top it all off, the food was flavorless. A disappointment all around.

Respectfully, I say spare yourself and your family from a terrible experience and go...

It hurts to write this review, because this has always been a go to restaurant for my family for as long as I can remember. I have many memories here and have had many good meals here.

Unfortunately last night and the last two times we have been here we have had bad dining experiences. Our previous lunches the service was so slow and bad, on a not so crowded day. I ended up just getting up and getting everything I needed for myself. Chopsticks, water, condiments, etc.. I chucked it up to them being understaffed or training someone new and brushed it off.

This brings me to last night. We had family in from out of town and they have never been to the area. We wanted to take them somewhere special to us and we bragged about this restaurant. Everything started fine, they held a reservation for us and gave us a nice seat next to the window. Everything after that was frustrating.

They took a long time to take our order, and kept forgetting to bring one of our parties a drink they ordered. Our appetizer came out fast however we had no silverware. And never saw our waiter to ask and had to get up and ask.

Our next hiccup, two meals came out for our party of nine and then nothing else for the next 20 min. I said something to our waiter after 15 min and he looked confused. He would have known but he never checked on us in that amount of time.

The food all finally came out and we were not impressed. We ordered as spicy as they could make it, and it was bland and not spicy at all. The Panang curry was off, and not good. Also this was also after an hour after ordering. This caused my parking meter to run out and I had to move my car towards the end of dinner which caused a disruption.

Let’s just say for the area, and location of the restaurant and the amount of money you pay for dinner I would expect better from this restaurant. I asked to speak to the manager who was not there, and I left my number to speak to him with no call back. It is such a fun area with many restaurants around, and other thai restaurants close by I would say skip this one for now and give another one a try until they get...

TLDR: Truly awful experience, would never return here, do not come.

For context, we are extremely laid back customers. Easy to please.

For our group of 6, two entrees came out literally 40 minutes after the others. Everyone was done eating. The restaurant was not particularly busy. The waiter must have forgotten to submit the order multiple times, because they checked on us twice early on and said it’d be right out - clearly it wasn’t .

They did not volunteer to comp the two entrees after this obviously huge mistake.

We asked for the two to be comped ($32 value), they said OK. Bill comes out. Only $15 taken off, which is weird since that wasn’t the price of either entree, and wasn’t what they said. We call a waiter over and explain they said both would be comped. He says something unintelligible to the effect of “$15 off is our max policy, anything further will have to come directly out of the waiters paycheck”. What??? The food was 40 minutes late, what are you talking about. Also if true, awful and predatory policy. He was trying to guilt trip us. We reiterated that they said $32 would be taken off and we didn’t care how that was accomplished.

Our waiter comes over. Says essentially this is their weird system, we’ll run the credit card with $15 taken off, then after hours, he’ll pay for the other $17 out of his paycheck, and a $17 refund will be subsequently pushed to my credit card. Again - what on earth. We said that’s a ridiculous policy. He said that’s how we do it. We said ok let’s do it.

Got my credit card statement, surprise, no $17 refund. So only $15 was taken off and they directly lied to us.

Food tasted good. Overall, a bizarre and off putting experience. Would urge management to reconsider the totally dishonest way they’re running...