The Baht - Thai Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Gatlinburg

#NotComingBack

Before I dive into the details, let me clarify something: The hashtag you see at the top of this post is part of a new practice I’m starting in my reviews. It’s a clear signal that I do not recommend a restaurant for a valid and specific reason—typically due to unprofessionalism or unfair business practices, such as mandatory gratuity or tipping policies. This hashtag is not about the quality of the food, the speed of service, or other subjective issues. It’s reserved strictly for cases where a restaurant's policies or practices cross the line of fairness.

Let’s get to the review now:

During our winter holidays in Pigeon Forge, we were excited to try some delicious Thai cuisine. A quick Google search led us to The Baht, a restaurant with promising reviews and ratings that made it seem like a must-visit.

We ordered starters, main courses, and Thai tea—trying a variety of items. My daughter, a big fan of chicken wings, went for the appetizers: 10 wings for $30, which felt overpriced in my opinion. I ordered the Khao Soi with beef, which, despite the beef being slightly overcooked, turned out to be the best dish we had. My son chose the Pad Thai, which was just okay—leaning a bit too much on the sweet side. My daughter also ordered the Clear Noodles, which were fairly average. My wife tried the Panang Curry, and it was, again, just okay. The Thai tea was decent, but I’ve definitely had better elsewhere.

Overall, the food was decent enough for me to consider giving them 4 stars. However, let me explain why they ended up with only 2 stars.

The Gratuity Issue: Their menu states a mandatory 20% gratuity for parties of 5 or more. While I’m not a fan of such policies in general, I was particularly upset to find that they included kids in the party count. Typically, restaurants only consider adults for such calculations. When I raised this concern with the server and the manager, the server was sympathetic but unable to help, while the manager dismissed my concern outright.

To make matters worse, after adding the 20% gratuity, the final bill also included a section requesting an additional tip. That level of audacity was truly disappointing.

Pros:

Very authentic Khao Soi Good Ambiance

Cons:

Mandatory gratuity is added for every bill, I never liked nor understood it. Very unpleasant management who is not listening to customers. Location is far from downtown.

Food Ratings:

Thai Tea: 5 / 10 Khao Soi: 8 / 10 Pad Thai: 6 / 10 Clear Noodle: 5 / 10 Chicken Wings: 5 / 10

Star Ratings:

Flavor: 5 / 10 - No Star Authenticity of Flavor: 6.5 / 10 - Star Cleanliness: 7 / 10 - Star Service: 3 / 10 - No Star Value for Money: 4 / 10 - No Star

Suggestion for owner: I know after reading my review you might not want to take advice from me, but if you are open minded you should really look into the gratuity policy again. Suggestion for customer: They have a mandatory gratuity for every invoice, so keep that amount in mind when planning a visit. Also Khao Soi is really good.

I believe this format best justifies my review, so I will hopefully continue using it for all my...

This restaurant, both inside and out, is beautiful, definitely not what you'd typically expect from an Asian restaurant. The menu offers a variety of options, but unfortunately, we weren't impressed with the flavors.

Our server mentioned she was new, though I'm not entirely sure what she said. From the moment we sat down, it was clear that the service wasn't going to be top notch. We visited on a Sunday late afternoon, and when we arrived, the restaurant wasn't busy, only two other tables were occupied, each with 2-3 people. It took a while for anyone to come over and take our drink and appetizer order. When the server finally appeared, we quickly placed our order: a lemonade, a Thai iced tea, and shrimp dumplings. The food arrived a few minutes later, but without small plates or chopsticks. Before we could ask, our server left. We waited again for her to return. When she did, we asked for plates, chopsticks, water with lemon, napkins, and straws. She returned with only chopsticks. At this point, I was already frustrated. We asked her to take our main course order: crab fried rice and jungle curry fried rice. Unfortunately, both were just okay. The flavors were flat and didn't have that distinct Thai taste you'd expect at a Thai restaurant.

When the food arrived, we still didn't have proper utensils, water, or napkins. I had to grab napkins from an empty table behind me. Another server noticed and came over. We explained everything we were still waiting for since we sat down. She quickly brought us plates, chopsticks, and water. That moment, combined with the mediocre food, really tarnished the experience. After the meal, we went out back to check out the chickens in the coop, which turned out to be the highlight of the evening.

The scenery from inside the restaurant is lovely, with tables alongside a small creek, which could make for a nice conversation starter, and they have a nice outside dining area, perfect for...

Came here for dinner, since all the steak houses have over 1 hr wait time. Since the reviews were pretty good here in google and decently in Yelp so we decided to give it a try. We ordered, crispy mushroom as appetizer, khao soi, kaho man kai (poach chicken, with rice cooked in chicken broth), Palo moo (braised pork stew) and Massaman curry. The best item was the appetizer, they fried oyster mushroom and it was tasty. All the rest of the dishes were over priced and small portion, feels like a tourist trap to be honest. The poached chicken was plain steamed chicken breast over white rice served with garlic soy sauce, and the rice was supposed to be flavorful rice, it wasn’t even cooked in chicken broth. Then we ordered an extra white rice for the massaman curry, 3/4 bowl of white rice is $5 ! Dude, that’s the most expensive white rice I have ever ordered! Worst part is all three entrees came out and everyone had almost finished eating their dishes, my pork stew didn’t even come out! I mean, I ain’t trying to be difficult, I saw they gave the same order to another table that came in after us, so I just asked the waitress that took our orders, could you please check my order because other table got their order before mine and everyone in our party are pretty much done eating. Other waitress knew she gave my pork stew to other table and our original waitress gave me the look like, yes, we are busy, with super stinky face. I was like, wow… that is really uncalled for this kind of service. So for $17 bucks on water poached flavorless chicken dish, and $17 buck tofu khao soi (think of regular yellow noodles with crispy fried yellow noodles with curry soup, which is so so not worth it) and few cube of tofu, $20 buck slow as hell, pork stews.. For the price value, tastes, and portion, this totally feels like tourist trap, period. Coming back for more? For their service?...