Tuk Tuk Thai Cafe — Restaurant in Austin

I made Thai cooking my next kitchen challenge and bought Pok Pok cookbook to understand these Thai ingredients and flavors. At Super 888 on Oltorf Som Tam (or green papaya salad) is one of our standing orders. Sour lime, sweet palm sugar, hot pepper and fish sauce dress the shredded papaya, tomato, cucumber, green bean topped with dried baby shrimp and chopped peanuts. The Super 888 owner's family are expanding to a North Austin location and South Austin location - Tuk Tuk. South Austin somehow missed the Thai gene in the restaurant pool. With Tuk Tuk my hope was that had changed. I ordered a green curry and found it to be "off." Not enough spicy heat and the kaffir lime leaf was missing. My conversation with the owners revealed the challenge a Thai food restaurant has in South Austin. Too many of their customers were vegetarian and unfamiliar with fish sauce and other essential ingredients in Thai cooking - Thai chilies, Thai basil and dried shrimp. To keep their customers coming back the owners decided to "Americanize" the food. We asked about the missing ingredients and learned we got the Americanized version. They HAVE all the ingredients to make the authentic dish but you have to ask the waiter for the authentic version. I will return to this restaurant because we want to have an authentic Thai experience in South Austin. I will go there often and spread the word this place has the potential to be as great as Super 888. That said, South Austin needs to realize there is more to Austin's food experience than TexMex. Thai cuisine is one of the unique and world class food experiences. Get the real deal at Tuk Tuk. Just be sure you ask your waiter for the AUTHENTIC recipes. One other inconvenience is the location on the northbound side of Manchaca just north of Stassney. If you are southbound head into the Austin Community College parking lot and make your way to westbound Stassney to turn the corner into their...

eh. Disappointing. As a work-from-homer, I wanted to get out of the house for lunch for a change of scenery. I got to Tuk Tuk right at 1pm and was puzzled to see the parking lot empty on a weekday. The reason? they havent reopened their dining room since the pandemic. I asked when they thought when they might open up again for dining in, and the answer was, " I don't know - maybe never!" So being a take out place is where they'd like to stay, ok that's fine, it's their business. Just dont go expect to hang out there and eat. More importantly , I asked specifically if a certain dish was made with sliced/chunks of chicken, or was it minced/ground. The hostess said " It's ground". To which I said GOOD that's how I like it ( I stopped going to a local Thai trailer when they changed ownership and changed from ground to chunky meat on this same dish, and when i make it at home, I do it with GROUND meat.) So I order the dish, gave spice level, and waited at the few seats they have left for you to wait in. It came out in a bag, guy thanked me politely, I thanked him, and left. When I opened it - at home- it is SLICED AND CHUNKY meat. And not very much meat to boot. So maybe this was a miscommunication, I tried to be very clear and it seemed like the hostess understood, but after all the disappointment I'm just not real high on this place at the moment. Maybe they'll reach out and ask me to come back and try to give them an opportunity to fix it. Maybe not. We'll see.

Edit: I must edit this review and change to 4 star - because I ate the food I was whine about and it was fantastic. They got skills in the kitchen . Next time I’ll make sure they know I prefer minced protein, but this was expertly seasoned and I’m...

I came to try this place with my dad as he’s a big fan of Thai food and spicy food. After reading other reviews, I was confident that this would be an awesome restaurant choice to try.

Wrong.

Let me break it down into two sections: food and service.

Food: Alright. My plate was alright but my dad was very underwhelmed with his dish. Our server asked him on a level of 1-5 how spicy he wanted his dish. He asked for 5 and was surprised to have just chili flakes sprinkled on the chicken. The owner got involved (see more below) and eventually brought out some homemade chili oil to pour over his chicken. Not the best way to have to season your own food but it solved the issue. I’d give the food a 3/5.

Service: Let’s put it this way - I’ll never dine-in again. Our server literally just threw our drinks, sweetener, and food on the tables. We let it pass the first two times but it seemed super unwelcoming. Secondly, we waited over 30 minutes to get our food. 3 parties who came in ahead of us were already eating and almost done. When a server was refilling our drinks, he asked if we wanted a to-go cup for our drinks and we responded we hadn’t even gotten our food yet. They rushed our food out after bringing it up 3 times. Seemed like they forgot about our order for a second. Thirdly, when we asked the waiters about their spiciness level, they said a 5 is chili flakes... ok. The owner finally came over and brought some chili oil. When we asked the owner why it took so long to get our food, she said she wanted our food to come out at the same time. My dad and I both ordered chicken... other tables ordered chicken, so still confused on that end. 1/5 rating.

Anyways, I would recommend going take-out instead...