Blue Elephant Thai Cuisine — Restaurant in Bakersfield

I feel bad to give a one star review because the negative review is meant only for two staff members, Art, the guy with the glasses and another man whose name I could not get. These two guys are extremely rude and disrespectful. They do not have any sensitivity towards children.

We were a group of 5 adults and 3 kids, of which 2 kids are 18 months and 8 months old. Anyone who has dealt with kids will know that children this age communicate only by making sounds or getting a bit cranky when they disagree with the something.

Art, the glasses guy, walks us to our table and signals us to keep our kids quiet! Fine.. we tried to. Later he walks up to our table to serve and looks at the dropped food bits under the high chairs and goes “OH MY GOD!” very rudely. To which we told him that we’re going to clean it up, which we did before we left.

Next, I’m changing my 8 month old’s nappy in the toilet, the baby makes noise, which I believe is very common, the second man yells at me from outside “HEY! WHAT IS GOING ON?! KEEP YOUR BABY QUIET!!” He then continued to tell my wife to “DO WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO AND MAKE HIM QUIET!!!”

We then spoke to the manager, Natasha, who was understanding and apologised for this appalling behaviour of those two men.

A note to the two men… if you guys hate children so much, DO NOT work in the customer service, retail or hospitality industries as you will come across even louder and difficult kids. You yourself might have kids and you yourself were kids at one point, DO NOT FORGET THIS! This is The United States where every citizen is treated with respect irrespective of their age, if you cannot, feel free to return to your own country. Henceforth, be respectful to parents and kids or anyone else for that matter or else you might have to deal with our legal system to be disciplined.

A note to the owner.. if you want your business to be negatively impacted or you wish your customers to have this kind of insulting experience, do continue to keep these guys in your staff.. if not then you need to replace these two asap, preferably with sensitive, polite and deserving people which you will find in abundance in the US.

The food however was delicious, the other staff was very pleasant.. but unfortunately, because of these two, this restaurant has lost this family as...

UPDATE: I went in to get a refund on the food that was uneaten the next morning (food was put in the fridge immediately when we knew we were not going to eat it). The owner flat out refused to give me any sort of refund, future discount, remake of the food, or any appologies. He then hilariously tried to have me take the rejected food with me. He was also pretty rude and standoffish. Don't buy into all the rave about this place, I think the owner pays for reviews and to get bad ones removed.

Got the blue crab fried rice, pad see ew, panang curry, tom yum, and chicken sate all for $86. The only things that were even edible were the white rice, curry, and sate. The blue crab fried rice had no flavor with big pockets of what tasted like black pepper, and it was majorly overcooked, with squishy clumps of rice. The crab had a really funky and bitter unfresh taste to it as well, no sweetness. Pad see ew honestly tasted sort of like spaghetti, like with marinara, not sure if they used a tomato base or something, but it had no flavor other than the strange background sauce, not sweet, nor savory. Panang curry was alright, not great, but it was very spicy (not advertised as such) and they put a bunch of cucumbers in it, which just didn't taste good with it. The tom yum was just gross, I couldn't even touch it. It didn't even taste like what I would have called tom yum, it tasted closer to minestrone. The chicken sate was actually pretty good, but I'm skeptical that the peanut sauce was not house made, too sweet and yummy to resemble anything going on in this kitchen. Avoid...

Ordered out from here because it’s been about 6 years since I last ate here. Overall everything just okay.

Pros: extra spicy is actually spicy. Most places shy away from adding too much heat. It wasn’t Thai hot or anything, but had a good amount of heat.

Cons: everything I say here is relative to the price. For $20+ per dish, I expect the quality to be there and it simply wasn’t a good value, especially with other options in town. Curry should have been $12-15 at most.

Flavor was lacking quite a bit. It tasted fine, but very bland. If it weren’t for the spice level, it would be almost entirely devoid of anything noteworthy.

Portion sizes were also underwhelming. Not tiny, but there has to be a balance with quality or portion size. Mediocre on both at a premium price doesn’t add up.

The online menu did not disclose all of the ingredients. The Panang curry came with cucumber, which is not only a wasted filler, but also adds a weird cucumber essence to the whole dish. I would have ordered something else had it been disclosed. That might be specific to the online menu though.

Overall, you won’t walk out disgusted by your food or anything, but you will overpay for sub...