Simply Thai and Sushi — Restaurant in Elon

Open on a Sunday for lunch with my hungry Laotian fam!

Committing to a lady's day out, once a month, to take my grandma (matriarch of the family), we traveled as far as Advance to eat here. Grandma's getting skinny and we needed to make sure we were going to find food she'd eat! So we landed on Thai/Lao and thank goodness they were open. The places by us either weren't open or didn't have great outdoor seating.

Stumbling in, my aunty immediately starts speaking Lao to the waitress, and alas, she acknowledged! This was very exciting for us and we were immediately able to bond over our preferences and expectations.

My aunt and I had the kowpoon with ground chicken. It was a fairly good portion and tasted very good! I'd probably prefer mine spicier, but the flavor was very satisfying for both of us. I think first-timers might be overwhelmed with the amount of cabbage and veggies that are laired on top, but in my experience, it's supposed to be eaten this way. Lao people love their veggies and it's supposed to give the soup a crunchy neutral taste/texture to the curry soup's richness.

I ordered the shrimp fried rice for my 2 year old who absolutely loved it. The portion was also appropriate. Had we not eaten 3 orders of the dumplings, she probably would have eaten the whole thing!

Speaking of dumplings, they were bomb! I enjoyed that there was a healthy meat-to-wrap ratio and of course, it was very tasty.

Grandma had the Rad Na and had to take hers to go! That gravy was yummy! My cousin had the sushi and the flavor was apparent all the way down to the rice.

Not a ton of things on the menu, but the few things there are done very well. Aunty says we'll make the drive to eat here again. Threw in a trip to Tanger Outlet to shop/walk it off and called it...

I really wanted to be able to give this place a sterling 5-star review but after getting some takeout this past weekend, I'm kinda bummed that my experience was a bit underwhelming. Since moving to Elon (from Chapel Hill) about 4 years ago, I've been wanting to find a good local Thai/Chinese restaurant that I could patronize regularly ... and enthusiastically. This past Friday was my first time ordering from Simply Thai. Pretty simple order: Pad Thai (they kindly said they could make it GF) with chicken. Bottom line: Pad Thai is not a particularly difficult or challenging dish to make and Simply Thai's basic no-meat version is $14. No problem. I requested chicken as an add-on and the person on the phone told me that with the added chicken my Pad Thai would be $20 – basically an extra $6 for the chicken. No problem, BUT for a $6 charge I was expecting at least a decent (and visible) amount of chicken in my Pad Thai. There was almost none. An embarrassingly tiny amount of chicken was hidden among my rice noodles and scallions. Had I known in advance that they so conspicuously scrimp on the meat add-ons, I would have simply passed on the chicken and just gotten the basic Pad Thai. I'm not sure when I'll dine there or get takeout again. Pretty disappointing. And I'm not sure the restaurant saves all that much by stiffing the customer...

I used to absolutely love this place... I had it rated at 5 stars. The sushi I would say was the best locally. But the past three times I've been the food has been subpar, the service slow and one of those times we were sat at a table and then never spoken to so we just left. Last night was the worst. I will start by saying our waitress was kind but apparently was trying to run most of the restaurant alone. We had to wait 20 minutes between drinks because they were out of glasses and it took over an hour to get our food. We had a party of about 11 and our food was brought out at all different times. My sushi was so bad. It literally fell apart as soon as I touched it. We asked three times to speak to the manager and told our waitress it had nothing to do with her. He refused to speak to us. Apparently his name was Matt. I don't know if children are running this place now or what is going on but our entire experience was so crazy. As much money as we were spending between drinks, appetizers, sushi and entries and he couldn't even come out and acknowledge how terrible everything was running. We definitely won't be back. I suggest going put of town and getting better food for the same price. And I truly hope that waitress gets a different job where she is appreciated and has a support staff that...