Fern Thai on Main (Bellevue) — Restaurant in Bellevue

I rarely ever leave a review, this is in fact my first review on Google. If I could leave a negative -5 stars I would after years of supporting & recommended lot of people going there. Me & my boyfriend’s experience on July 30th was beyond disappointment! We were just chatting about our visit on July 30th, he was not satisfy & I was beyond disappointed. If the manager felt the need for a rude double refusal towards customers as you can see from other negative reviews as well, then viewers have the right to know the full spectrum of it!

I’ve tried order Thai fried rice as usual w/ extra rice& other things. Server took our order, came back said kitchen cant do it. I recognize the server was new so I explained to her, we always order this dish w/extra rice. She was nice & tried to accommodate, we saw her from distant getting stop by her manager. Followed by the manager came up to us, wasn’t even trying to have a normal human conversation rather over the top rudeness stating they never do that, when I said I’ve always order this dish this way since we always order several dishes I just don’t like regular white rice! She started to get very loud at us because will change the recipe and lot of non sense like no body ever eaten at a restaurant. Plus saying we just decided not to do it anymore with her attitude & staring. She had no means for a communication but pick a fight attitude while many customers looking. Such an embarrassment for this establishment! I was aware that they were having dinner party in the back, if that were the case she could’ve just kindly explained& we would’ve understand or manage her staffs in the kitchen instead. To be fair, people order extra carb, extra meat, or remove certain items due to allergy or whatever reasons. That’s just a personal preference, not trying to change their recipe. If a restaurant doesnt even know how to cook with little extra or less item, that isnt a restaurant. As I know many restaurant people & owners, thats just nonsense from her. Mind you, is not we don’t pay for the extra fried rice, there’s extra charge. Every time we go there 2 people always walk out at least 150-200+ all depends, plus my boyfriend always tip them 20%+. Their servers been nice & especially the guy at the front desk with short bangs. I wish I remember his name, he wasn’t there that day but he was always professional, the nicest & sweetest person ever. He’s the restaurant’s asset! He always came to our table & thank us as regulars! Not like this so called manager lady, I don’t know her name but you can’t missed her negative aura, hair neck length with suit like jacket all the time which we never interact with her since she’s always staring & seem very rude. Her hatred attitude does not deserve to be in hospitality business!

However, she’s only nice twice I saw her with the owner’s there! If you’re the owner reading this, please take into account knowing how your staff actually behave not just when you’re there but when you are not there at your restaurant! We dine out a lot, I mean a lot, many times a week! From street food to small restaurants, John Howie, Michelin star restaurants! I never had such bad experience! We pay to dine out, expecting at least basic food & service. A restaurant besides food is at least dinning experience, right? Whether food’s good or not, people you hired shouldn’t at least ruin someone’s dinner, correct?! I was already not feeling too well that day, I couldn’t even eat & she tried to ruin our dinner! This so called manager lady didn’t seem to want our business with her own personal rudeness& issues at the owner’s expense! Not only we wont return anymore, I recommended lot of people going there before, but no more! Now on I also will give the same honest bad experience...

This brand new Thai restaurant is absolutely phenomenal. I've been a few times now during their soft opening and had the opportunity to try a bunch of dishes, and I've always been very impressed. I highly recommend it, and this will definitely be my regular go-to Thai spot.

The pad thai is served with tableside prep where they'll mix authentic toppings to your liking for you, as well as demonstrate how to eat the banana blossom (which was lucky since it's the first time I'd seen one). Flavors of the pad thai were very well balanced, and all four of the traditional tastes that are prevalent in thai food (salty, spicy, sour, sweet) were there. The pad see ew was sweet but balanced by the smokeyness of the chicken. The noodles themselves tasted fresh and tender. Deep fried turmeric red snapper was delicious; fresh fish, crispy outside. We also tried the pork larb, which was good but nothing too special (hard to mess up larb though), and the morning glory veggie dish, mostly because that's a very rare dish to find in the US. The morning glory dish was good, but again nothing special. We got the snapper with 2 stars spicy, and it was spicier than expected, whereas the other dishes were 1 star spicy and not noticeably spicy. If you have a lower tolerance for spiciness, start low as they seem to ramp up pretty fast; you can always ask for additional chili sauce, but you can't make a dish less spicy.

I've also tried three of their cocktails. I don't remember any of their names, but I highly recommend the cocktail with banana. The longan cocktail was decent (tea + scotch was a bit of a weird but interesting flavor). They had tea leaf infused ice, which was cool. I didn't like the tamarind sour cocktail too much (didn't have a wide range of flavor to me, was just sour).

The prices are "normal" for downtown Bellevue (i.e. high compared to other areas), but most of the dishes are tasty and reasonably portioned that you don't feel too bad paying their listed prices. That said, the fried snapper was a bit more expensive than I think it should be, but maybe that's just the cost of the snapper itself as it seemed to be an outlier on the menu.

The staff is very polite and reasonably prompt for how busy the place always is, though it's clear that they're still new and learning how their systems work. I'm sure that'll get sorted in another week or so, though. Food comes out at a regular speed (not particularly fast, but not slow either).

The decor is bright, inviting, and open; a far cry from the old Local Burger that used to be there. I wouldn't have recognized the interior.

I believe that their menu is a trial for their soft opening so it's subject to change, but I've taken some photos...

We‘ve lived to Bellevue for a few years now and slept on Fern. Mainly because it always looked busy so I always thought it was fussy to dine there while there are a ton of other Thai options in the area. Finally tried it for a late dinner on a Saturday night (because thet opened later than other places) and no wait for a table !

Not pictured is the grilled eggplant salad that we devoured. The salad came out warm, which surprised me a bit given that it was under Salad section. It was incredibly flavorful, the eggplant was smoky, the squid was perfectly cooked that I didn’t know squid didn’t … have to be tough and chewy like I’m used to.

We tried to order uncommon Thai dishes and Fern has a ton of dishes that I haven’t seen at other places. We ordered 2 entrees: Talay Phad Cha and Pad Phong Garee.

The Pad Phong Garee was under the separate Chef Special menu. It was described as “cream sauce”, which I thought was like Italian , like some sort of white sauce. But it turned out MUCH better than that. If I have to describe the sauce, it’s more like salted egg yolk texture and taste, very rich and umami. I ordered this with soft shell crab. The crab was perfectly fried, coated in panko battered, and they served the crab on top of the sauce so it didn’t get soggy.

Talay Phad Cha was a mixed seafood dish with a unique sauce as well. In contrary to Pad Phong Garee, this sauce was light, the plant used has a hint of spice like ginger and lime leaf (?). It was def interesting and very good. The seafood was abundant, the mussel was massive, the scallops were incredibly soft and succulent in texture. The shrimp was good, but that’s given. I think the scallops were the most impressive.

Be warn, the onions used in all the 3 dishes only kissed the wok, which I hated the raw onion taste but my husband loved it and said it was done correctly. So to each his own.

While the food was amazing, the vibe was a little strange to me. They played club music at a volume barely not too loud. So it made for a weird date night atmosphere. We were also seated at the very front so the music was probably louder. Will have to try to sit in the back next time.

Overall, 10/10 on all 3 dishes. And I would definitely order them again but mostly like trying other unique dishes when...