Ratana's Green Papaya Salad — Restaurant in Hawaii

Another quick review!

Gluten free and vegetarian options!

Very good food! Best Thai noodles I've ever tasted!

The texture is perfect! I think the flavors mix very well and the cooks know what they're doing.

Everything was spectacular! But.... One- actually 2 things I ought to mention;

The avocado summer roll thing- actually good, but I feel as if the sauce was really sweet. The outside wrap was interesting, and my favorite part actually.

Service- (this part is quite long, but to sum it up, no bueno)

too bad I couldn't pick up the flavors very well because this older lady at the front counter was very disrespectful, I usually don't leave reviews like this but it made me very uncomfortable.

As a tourist I was very dissatisfied with the treatment the counter person had with a particular customer. A young mother with her young child came in, she was kicked out due to her child being "disruptive." Me and my family were the only other four people in the room, and confirmed that in fact, the cute little guy, was not disruptive...

Boom! Kicked out anyways!

Disgusting! revolting! He's just a child!

This behavior is unacceptable and childish. Me and my family do not recommend this restaurant to anyone.

The whole time I was just at "aloh- huh???"

This really brought the rating down, I hope that they treat upcoming customers with the utmost kindness.

Thank you, and have a...

I love, love, love how Ratana's is a super small hole in the wall place that cranks out super fresh, super hot foods.

We had a party of 7 asks we took up half of the restaurant. Needless to say the inside is small, but the dishes are BIG! Let me preface by saying that pretty much all dishes are accompanied by rice (mixed white and some other type I'm not familiar with).

We ended up ordering shrimp Panang curry ($11). While it was a creamy, flavorful dish, I think it could've used a bit more coconut and peanut butter in the curry itself. Either that or the Panang Curry was diluted by the rice bowl it was mixed in with. Or maybe it was style of Thai cooking I'm not used to. We also decided on chicken Pad Se Ew ($10). However instead of wide rice noodles, Pad Thai style noodles and was more like pad Thai. Our last entree was a spicy shrimp (are huge) papaya salad ($10). This dish was by far the best item here for me. It has all the properties of what a papaya should have. The spicy, salty, slightly sweet, limey acid added to the home grown fresh, crunchy papaya was excellent. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS MENU ITEM.

What I was really excited to try was sticky mango rice dessert, but by the time we finished the food we were beyond stuffed.

I really like this place. The value is incredible, and I absolutely recommend Ratana's. I just wish some of the entree flavors were...

I had a very bad experience today with the older lady taking orders. I think she is the owner and was extremely rude to me. I had my 3 year old with me who you know is only 3 years old! He looked around played with the napkin holder that was empty anyway, looked at those paper boxes by the wall they use for to go but he kept them in place and just being a normal 3 years old kid. She didn’t like it and started yelling at me at one point she said something vulgar to me too. She said we can’t even come back anymore. I asked a family who was sitting there if my son is really that bad and they were sorry and said he was completely fine. I started crying because this made me sad being treated poorly like that. I left in tears and felling down because she didn’t have a good day or i really don’t know what happened to her. I live in hilo and I went there with my son like 2x/month to get him noodles. I actually don’t like their noodles that much but he did plus they are cheap. That’s why I went there. This was first time it happened to me but there was usually different lady taking orders before. Anyway, I ended up paying for being treated this poorly because my son would start crying if we would leave without it but I left in tears. Now, I will start gladly paying a little more somewhere else where we will be treated kindly...