Bua Thai Cuisine — Restaurant in Durham

Decided to give Bua a second change because I was a bit disappointed the first time around and the reviews suggested I shouldn't be. Should have followed my instincts. The Tom Kha soup and sticky rice (difficult to mess that up) are good and deserve 3 stars. However, the drunken noodles and cashew nut pork were bland, boring and no better than a decent quality (?) frozen entree from a grocery store. The spring rolls looked (and tasted like) half-smoked cigars--had one bite, couldn't eat the rest. There are several Thai/Vietnamese/Chinese take out restaurants in the area that serve much better dishes for less cost. I'll stick with those from now on. 4/9/22 Decided to reduce to 1 star. Why ? family decided to go eat here because of the decent online reviews. I was at work and wasn't aware they were going here, otherwise I would have suggested they go elsewhere based on previous experiences. Without "warning" they brought home an order of drunken noodles and Tom Kha soup. I'm not getting these 5 star reviews at all--guess no one in the area has had really good Thai food before. Both dishes were lousy , I regret tasting them. Drunken noodles remain bland/boring/overly salty and just plain unappealing. The Tom Kha soup , once a decent example, now isn't worth trying (unless you are severely sodium depleted)--there is absolutely no "love" or creativity infused in this cooking--its cafeteria quality at best . And to add in'salt' to injury, the prices are way out of line given the quality. Again, there are far better, more authentic and reasonably priced Thai/Vietnamese places in the Triangle (Thai cafe/Bowl of Pho to mention just 2 of several) that actually give a damn about what they are serving. Please go to any one of...

The food is fantastic. I very much enjoyed it. We went to the place before the pandemic and it was disorganized in the Front of House. It still is.

The only issue is that our order came out one plate at a time. When I asked, I was told one person prepares all of the Noodle dishes. That's actually pretty standard, so clearly either there is disorganization in the kitchen or they aren't waiting for full tickets to be complete. It's a simple fix, because this has happened to me 0 times since I started going out again. Because they prepare it fresh to order, if they had waited and brought the whole table the food would still have been as hot and amazing.

Still, you should eat at this place. I could have caught them on a bad day - there was a large group that never seemed to leave - so everyone could have been wiped and over it. Left them a good tip, because food was good and the servers were friendly.

I am going back there again. They bring out the food together and it is 5 stars all day. This is really 4.5, but that isn't allowed. Highly recommend even...

Update to previous review. Ordered the Pad Thai with no peanuts tonight and I was extremely disappointed with the food. The last time I ordered from Bua was almost 5 months ago and there had to be a different chef/cook back then because the food was good. I don’t know what happened, but this go round the food was awful and tasted weird. They did not use Pad Thai Noodles this time, but instead used noodles that were very thin and reminded you of spaghetti noodles only thinner/finer. The Pad Thai had a different taste and was very very dry not to mention missing scallions. Lucky for me I keep Sweet Thai Chili Sauce on the shelf…. It definitely helped. Placed 2 orders with the shrimp for an extra cost. Was it worth it, definitely not!! What a waste of $34 (down the drain). The sign on the door says ‘Help Needed’ for kitchen and waitstaff. No wonder the food wasn’t the same, different cooks in the kitchen. Bua Thai was a favorite at one time, but now it’s time to shop around for a new place to eat Thai or learn how to make it...