Original Thai Cuisine — Restaurant in Hawaii

I love Pad Thai, and buy it the first time I ever go to a Thai restaurant. I've eaten hundreds of Pad Thai dishes at hundreds of restaurants around the world.

Let's start with the initial presentation below. Plenty of fresh, uncooked beansprouts for a good crunch texture in the mouth. A small but not tiny amount of chopped peanuts. These are good. However, unfortunately that's where my compliments on the Pad Thai have to end. The noodles were very thin for rice noodles, and seemed overcooked and fell apart into small bits before I had finished. The green onions were plentiful, but due to how large each piece was as you can see, instead of more finely chopped, this meant that some bites didn't have any onion taste, and some bites tasted of nothing but green onion. Worst of all though, is that this restaurant's design of the main flavoring, is a thick gooping of Mystery Red Sauce, what I call it when a pad Thai is just swimming in sauce rather than being lightly tossed in it. (this also contributes to rice noodles falling apart faster too). A good pad Thai should have only trace amounts of sauce left on the plate when finished. It's just overpowering otherwise.

Also, as much as I love the fresh beansprouts in general, there seemed to be a weird almost metallic/chemical tang to them. Never have seen that before. Texture great on those, taste, sadly not.

Ambiance of restaurant was fine, a little bland with heavy dark wood theme everywhere. Staff were busy and a bit stressed seeming (place was packed with tourists including us) but they were nice.

All and all, I would stop by again probably, see how other dishes are, but I would never have the Pad Thai...

Worse than mall food court Thai. Small portions, bad taste, and a complete disaster if you order anything with noodles. I honestly don’t know how this place is still in business.

Pad Thai – They used super thin noodles, which completely ruined the texture. It was way too sweet and sour, like they just dumped bottled sauce over it.

Drunken Noodles (Pad Kee Mao) – Hands down the worst I’ve ever had. It was watery, not stir-fried at all, and somehow, they also used thin noodles instead of the wide ones that are supposed to be in this dish.

Panang Curry – I have no idea why there were so many cucumbers floating in the soup. The curry itself was thin and watery, lacking any richness or depth of flavor. The rice bowl was tiny, literally smaller than my fist—and I’m a slim female!

Thai Basil Fried Rice – The only thing I could finish, but not because it was good—just because everything else was worse.

When I asked the server about the thin Pad Thai noodles and cucumber curry—he said, “That’s how we’ve done it for five years.” Maybe that explains why everything was so bad. I have no idea how they’ve lasted this long. Do NOT waste your time...

Tonight we were served by two staff members- a friendly gentleman, and a woman who was incredibly rude. When we walked into the restaurant, the female server at the door looked up at us, didn't say a word, then walked away. The other server came up to greet us and sit us at a table. At first, we didn't think anything of it. But it was odd when the female server dropped off our food and the bill without any acknowledgement, and failed to refill our waters even though our cups were empty throughout the evening. We tried to flag her down, but she wouldn't give our table any notice. I've served before so I understand when servers are busy, but this woman seemed to deliberately make no effort to be cordial to us. My boyfriend and I felt so unwelcome, and we couldn't figure out why her attitude was so haughty. I'm completely shocked by how unfriendly her service was. I haven't written a bad review about a restaurant before, but this experience was so distasteful I felt I needed to share it to make sure others don't have the same experience we did. There are so many other great restaurants in Kona...