Taste of Thai Express — Restaurant in City of Ithaca

Updated 06-Oct-2024 Another year has gone by and the restaurant continues its slide. Added a star for the food, dropped to 1 star each for service and atmosphere.

Look, the food is good. Tasty and sometimes well presented. But is it worth the total lack of ambiance and atrociously bad service?

Old ToTE: polite, attentive, well dressed servers (uniformly tidy black clothing). Now: sweatshirts suitable for high school. Old ToTE: no elegance but tidy plainness. Now: a mess. At least the dining room is clean.

Service: "Oh, sit anywhere," (3/4 empty dining room). 5 minutes later, "Sorry it took so long," (with menus and water). 9 minutes (we're sitting there with closed menus), "Are you ready to order?" Soup for two and two main dishes; specifically asked for spice/condiment tray. A lot later (another couple had left rather than continue waiting for their order), I inquired whether there was a problem. "I didn't take your order and (consulting iPad) it was only 27 minutes ago, we're very busy." Exaggerated 360-degree to confirm the empty dining room. "We have a lot of takeout orders." "Should we have ordered takeout?" "Our wait time is an hour for that." 5 minutes later, soup appeared. A minute or two later—we were still ladling the soup into the bowls—both main dishes showed up. The spice tray: a no show. We finished the soup along with the main courses. It was dead cold by then.

Was the food worth waiting almost an hour for? In a restaurant with ambiance (like, something to nibble on while waiting), yes. In the case of ToTE ... well, I do not think this word "Express" means what they think it means.

Updated 03-Jul-2023 Four years—COVID, plus—have changed this restaurant a lot. This review echoes other recent reviews (sort by "most recent"): not a change for the better.

A month ago, we were told that it was not serving customers; something about a big catering job.

VIsited again, yesterday. The dining room was maybe half full. We ordered appetizer, soup, and main courses. I specifically asked for the condiment tray. After 30-45 minutes, our order arrived. All at once: appetizers, soup, main dishes. The condiment tray never showed up.

The food was tasty, in its own way but did not have the appearance, flavor, or texture it should have had. The Tom Yum soup was a cloudy, spicy mushroom broth with little lemongrass flavor, not at all the flavorful, clear broth we expected. It was more like broth from cooking pasta in leftover mushroom water, with some randomly chosen hot sauce.

The Green and Massaman curries were thin liquids with flavors only a pale shadow of what we're used to. My chicken was overcooked leather. The Green curry was like a sour cream sauce that had sortof walked by a jar that was labeled "mild".

All the entrees were stone cold by the time we'd finished the starters. No nasturtiums or other visual touches. Silverware in a pile, with a pile of paper napkins.

Maybe we were unlucky. The establishment drops from 4 stars to 3, and only that many because of past history and the possibility that it was the cook's first day after spring training at McDonalds.

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Previously, some time around 2019.

A very good Thai restaurant featuring many distinct flavors and good service. A nice dining room with an excellent view of NYS Rt.13 (just kidding, it's great to watch the sunsets behind the road).

Some folks tend to shy away from Thai dining, fearing too much spice. Not a real problem. It's a rare restaurant that would make food very spicy (unless you're personally known to them)...they want you to return!

ToT Express shares the Thai tradition of dishes that delight the eye as well as the palate. They must have umpteen differently shaped plates; if you know the shapes, you can almost tell what the folks at the next table are eating, just from the plate.

The decor was plain but the food was just as good and the prices, a bit less than today. Nonetheless, ToT Express is not overpriced...especially by the scale of other...

My gf was dead set on thai food tonight and we had heard only rave reviews about this place from people so we decided to give it a try tonight. The first red flag should have been the lack of a greeting from the hostess who made eye contact with us and I was eventually forced to say hi because my gf wanted to wait until she did her job. I didn't think much of it because it was towards the end of the night and she may have just been tired with a slight lapse of thought. There were plenty of empty seats in the restaurant since there was only an old couple in one corner of the room and a family who they decided to sit us at the table directly next to them. I'm all for having a family restaurant environment, but if you have open seats I would prefer to have a little more privacy and not have a kid making fart noises seated right behind me(nothing wrong with the kid, but give us some space with all the open seats). However, the service from the waitress that followed was showed we were in for an "interesting" dining experience. After waiting for more than 10 mins for our waitress to acknowledge our presence despite coming to check on the family behind us several times we finally were able to place our orders. Should have followed my instincts to leave $5 for the water and left, but my gf really wanted some thai food and to give them a second chance. Sadly, this is not where I will tell you things improved and we had a wonderful experience after she came over. No, after ordering our appetizers and my gf a thai iced tea, I started to notice the waitress only looked at my gf and totally ignored me until I spoke. Once our appetizers arrived(before my gf's iced tea since the waitress apparently forgot despite all the attention she gave her). After our food arrived it looked amazing, yet I was totally disappointed that my order of SPICY fried rice was made to be sweeter than some desserts I have eaten which is pretty amazing. My gf who ordered a yellow curry was surprised to find out that her meal which was picked for being the only non-spicy curry on the menu(they do not allow you to lower spiciness of curries) was actually mildly hot. When we went to switch dishes my gf was having trouble moving her plate as it was stuck to the table at which point I was sure we were on "What would you do" the tv show or some other prank show based off of how ridiculous our experience was to this point. Sadly, this was not the case and it was simply stuck to the plate because of some sticky substance that was not properly cleaned off the table before we sat down. I was able to move it for her and we tried to enjoy the other's meal to salvage our night out together. After filling up half on their food and frustration in equal parts we decided to just take our food home. The waitress would not make another appearance though since the family left and we were left to our own devices. Ten minutes later, my gf decided to ask the hostess for to-go containers since my attempt to flag down the other waiter failed. They must have informed the waitress that we were still there because she brought out our check and had the nerve to ask if we wanted dessert(we did, but decided to get it from wegman's as this place would receive no more of our business and I LOVE sticky rice with mango). At no point did she or anyone else ask how our meal had been, seemingly knowing they had set a new bar for low standards that even the worst late night fast food place would be ashamed of keeping. We debated over leaving a tip and note describing the poor service we had received before deciding to give 15%(much underserved). As for the note, we decided that writing reviews on here and yelp was much better than a private note with the hope the owner would see how poorly we were treated. We will not be back even though this is the closest thai place to...

I love me some Pad Thai. I always get it whenever I order from a Thai restaurant, without fail. Taste of Thai Express offers really good sizes for a decent price. Up the street is Tamarind, which has seen smaller portions but higher prices, so I hope ToTE stays gold in that regard. Love the reward system, which gives you points to save for another meal. So, I was able to get even more Pad Thai. Everyone wins.

I've never eaten in the restaurant since they've reopened the lobby post-pandemic, but I've never needed to since I always choose take out. Even so, I have always had a good experience with the ladies at the pick up window, who are never rude. Now, the name "Express" is at best wishful thinking. I've come to get used to needing to hearing them tell me it will take anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes for pickup. I hope it's because so many other Ithacans are getting their Thai fix, but I can't know.

This establishment has built a lot of goodwill with me over two years. Once, they took down the wrong call back number, and so I waited extraordinarily long for them to alert me that the meal was ready. So, they gave me a complementary meal. Another time, there was a mix up with the points system and card I had on file. So, they let me use previous credits right away and continue with the points system instead of completely starting over. Another time I desperately called about 10 minutes before closing to order, not knowing that they actually shut down the kitchen 15 minutes before closing. Yet, they were willing to fire up the ovens one last time for my meal. I was immeasurably grateful. That is the sort of PR that keeps customers coming back, overlooking faults, and even leaving tips. Would give Taste of Thai Express a 5/5, but the time between ordering and eating isn't actually in line with the name. But in my experience, it has been worth the wait.

In the future, I will definitely order more Pad Thai from Taste of Thai Express, and I will definitely enjoy it. Thanks for everything ToTE! Best bang...