A Thaiger — Restaurant in Hamilton

I have to say it was a breath of fresh air to see a thai and sushi restaurant in such a small town. I'm a huge fan of both, which is probably my two favorite foods. The restaurant is a little old feeling but felt clean, there quite a lot of decor and I appreciate the unique feel. The staff were nice and I enjoyed trying the food but I just was not a huge fan. I love the boba tea, it was a bit too sweet for me, it tasted like a Shirley temple with tapioca pearls and I couldn't help but finish it, would recommend if that sounds good. I had the "soup of the week", Tom Yum soup. Which I thought was odd it was printed on the menu although it's a common soup and it's a small town. I just feel like it may be a soup of forever. I tried it and it had a very good bite to it, nice and sour and was quite spicy. I just feel that the soup was quite vegetable heavy that I was not expecting, I'm used to having (typically) shrimp or prawns in my Tom Yum soup. I did order the tofu in it as I knew I was going to try meat in my dinner so this may have just been my fault. There were also whole grape tomatoes floating in it that seemed a little odd to me by tasted fine. Then I had the drunken noodles. The noodles were hot but all lumped together in one large heap, they were difficult to separate and I found lacked much flavor. I appreciate the spice on the noodle but there just was not a ton of flavor. I thought the pad-thai which my girlfriend had was much better. The perfect amount of sauce, a little heat, and a decent flavor. I just felt that the food was still lacking a bit of flavor and was overall only ok. This is that I've had a lot of Thai food in my life though and this restaurant is a good choice in such a small town. I apologize if I'm overly harsh. Overall my experience was just a little underwhelming and when I paid ~48 $ for two people it just felt a little much to me. I would not tell you to avoid here, especially if you are looking to try Thai food or enjoy sushi but for me it's just a little too much for the price. I forgot to mention the portion sizes on the noodles are massive by the way, almost enough for two people to share which may be an explanation...

We came here for dinner and had 5 delicious entrees and two appetizers to split among our table. We also asked about a drink menu, to see prices, but they do not have one. The waitress showed us the wine. It was a Starborough white. Since we had all had this wine before from the grocery store for $10-$12 a bottle we assumed there would be a bit of a mark up and were fine with ordering 2 bottles. Our check came and the food was $85 which is a completely reasonable price. It was delicious and we thoroughly enjoyed it. We were shocked to discover two bottles of wine were priced at a COMPLETELY unreasonable price of $40 per bottle. This is an over 330% overpricing of the bottle. When we tried to addressed the issue with the staff we were treated quite poorly for trying to explain how unethical it is to refuse to list prices or tell prices and then upcharge so much that two bottles of grocery store wine costs the same as 5 entrees and two appetizers at their restaurant. I do not recommend this restaurant. They do not have ethical practices and we felt completely taken advantage of.

It is also interesting that in response to this review the restaurant linked an article that doesn’t explain why it is okay to over charge but instead explains that marking wine up 300-400% can happen because they hope the customer won’t notice and how to best avoid these...

It's reasonable that restaurants are busy, especially when there may be an event going on. Like a school graduation. It's poor to assume everyone that walks in knows what is going on. Sometimes the guest is just passing through town. A host, by definition, is a person who receives people as guests. The treatment we received from this business's host was so horrendous. I can't rate the food or atmosphere as I never got in to enjoy. I left not because unwilling to wait but because the hosts poor reception made the restaurant atmosphere undesirable. Talking down to a party to try and get them to leave because it's busy is tasteless and uneducated in the context of a hosts responsibility. It’s okay to say the truth, for example, it's a big event today, we are unusually busy, it looks like it's at least an hour wait. Rather than your party is too large, as though the fact I have a party of 5 is the problem it's my fault. Then, tell the person behind in line, when they ask, oh it's busy? Oh, not for you, we have a place for you." Its all derogatory and completely unnecessay.

Small town, not a lot of places to eat, just don't expect reasonable, straight forward, honest hospitality. Likely you'll be treated less than whatever the hosts opines a stranger should be treated on that day, in that moment based on his mood....