Khao-Wan Thai Kitchen — Restaurant in Columbia

I will start off by saying how excited we were to try this new place and the reviews have been great. We placed a TO GO order that was over $120, so that multiple people could be fed. I placed order at 6pm on 12/09/24 & told them it would be picked up around 6:30. No problem with the 30 minute pick up time. They were very busy for a Monday and they close at 7:30pm. Order was not ready until after 7pm.

VERY DISAPPOINTED with the PAD THAI. Nothing but noodles! A few pieces of egg & green onion, along with a small cup of chopped peanuts. NOT A SINGLE BEAN/MUNG SPROUT in the entire dish, despite that the pictures on FB from the restaurant clearly shows bean sprouts & all traditional recipes call for sprouts. Every other Thai place we have ever been to has sprouts. WE ORDERED 3 DIFFERENT PAD THAI dishes - 1 with tofu, 1 with shrimp & 1 with pork belly. NO SPROUTS in any of them. I was told by the pork belly order, that the pork belly was very chewy. The shrimp was okay - about 7 in order. Dish seemed a bit dry/sticky, but that could be just because it was a to go order. Maybe if eaten fresh, there is more moisture but again, TRADITIONAL PAD THAI, has sprouts (and that is truly the best part, with it adding crunch to the dish!).

Fresh Salad Rolls were tasty BUT they wrap the to go order in foil and the rice paper that it is wrapped in sticks to the foil, so therefore, you have a dismantled mess to eat. NEED TO CONSIDER WRAPPING IN PLASTIC WRAP!!! Was told the peanut sauce for dipping was very good! OH, there was no thai basil, regular basil, mint or cilantro in the rolls - which are traditional variations. Literally lettuce, cabbage, carrot & cucumber.

Fried Spring Rolls were tasty but nothing overly exciting. No idea if made fresh or bought frozen & fried - either way, the pre-made ones you can buy at Asian markets in Nashville & cook at home are just as tasty.

Thai Beef - the one eating said no flavor. Said the jasmine rice had more flavor. Very small portion for the money.

Thai Fried Rice with Tofu - was so -so. The chunks of tomato were tasty but flavor was nothing exciting. Small portion for $12. Nothing to get excited over. Definitely not enough to consider it a meal for a vegetarian!

Thai Wings - VERY TASTY at a heat level of 5 and no doubt, would be even better & crispy when eaten fresh at restaurant.

Southern Ground Pork heat level 7 - husband said it was VERY GOOD. Felt the heat at the back of his throat & made him smile.

As mentioned, was so looking forward to trying this place based on the reviews given after only being open a few weeks. Usually do not try new places until they have been open for months, just so they can iron out any issues, but the reviews were positive. I doubt we will go back as there are other options both in Columbia/Spring Hill/Franklin (and we have been to multiple times, always satisfied).

Service for take -out was friendly. No pictures, as we were all hungry and excited to eat.

EDIT - The owner apparently didn't like this post - made a comment on the restaurant FB page about it. Admitted that since they couldn't get bean sprouts locally in Columbia, it wasn't feasible for them to make a drive every other day to Nashville to get them, so they just leave them out.

It's ironic that all the Chinese restaurants in Columbia, Spring Hill etc manage to put bean sprouts in there egg foo young and other dishes. The other Thai places in Columbia and Spring Hill also put bean sprouts in their Pad Thai dishes. If bean sprouts are stored correctly, they would only need to be purchased every week! CARPOOL!!!

But when you boast about being a traditional Thai restaurant & bean sprouts are traditionally served in a fair number of Thai dishes, then maybe there should be (*) that mentions that due to being unable to get certain ingredients locally, they will be omitted from the traditional dishes!

And I'm sorry that the owner of this restaurant considered this entire review as poor, because that wasn't the case & obviously they couldn't handle a...

We really wanted to like this place as we’re always looking for good Asian food in the area. Unfortunately the service was awful and the food was just okay. After reading some of the other one-star reviews and the owner’s responses, I know I’m not the only one who had this type of experience.

We ordered all of our dishes without onions since my husband has an allergy. When the food finally arrived, one of the dishes clearly had a lot of onions in it. When we politely asked the server to redo the dish since we told our waitress “no onions on anything” at least 3 times, the server loudly sighed and rolled her eyes. Then, when I told her we’d eat the dish that didn’t have onions, she rudely stated “I’m just trying to fix what you complained about.” Most times when a mistake like this happens, the servers are apologetic and hurry to fix the error, but this lady was the complete opposite.

We opted to pay for the appetizer we ate and the dish that had no onions and leave. The cook (maybe owner?) even came out to see what was going on but no apology was offered or desire to fix their error.

Even if this incident didn’t happen, the food was subpar. The fresh spring rolls looked like they were wrapped (not even very tightly) and stuffed with the lettuce, carrot, cabbage bagged salad mix you can buy from the grocery store. And the “steamed” veggies were raw. The pineapple fried rice was okay, but we ordered it with shrimp and got chicken instead. Needless to say, we won’t ever...

Great experience!! My family and I went tonight and had a lovely time. There were only 3 girls on staff tonight, but quality was not sacrificed at all. Our singular chef provided everything fresh and made to order with excellent quality and flavors. She really brought some amazing food to us tonight. Our main waitress worked hard to keep everyone in good spirits, even if there were so many to serve and only just her to do it. She also did an amazing job keeping up with everything she had on her plate and still consistently stopping to wash her hands frequently and at appropriate times. The third gal tonight worked to bring food to the table and help our two other heroes. She stayed polite and helpful even under the stress of having so many folks in the restaurant at one time.

Major shoutout to all three. The food was genuinely amazing and we were happy to wait for it as it came out fresh and hot. The thai teas were excellent, pot stickers felt fresher than any I have had recently, and every meal was perfectly well cooked with a true commitment to high quality ingredients.

Thank yall for a lovely night. We will...