Thai Spice — Restaurant in Hendersonville

There was a nice atmosphere upon arrival, though not as busy as I'd expect for Mother's Day. As in, very little inside traffic. We were greeted and sat appropriatly, but left to our own devices as far as getting seating for our small children. I had to get my own booster seats, which were unexpectedly VERY sticky. VERY. We just endured and pushed on.

When able to order, our server only took half the drink order before disappearing. We finally got the drinks and she came back after making us wait for a LOT of to-go orders to be seen before she could even visit the table. We commented on how "we should have ordered it to go" and our waitress, Michelle, said that it would have been an hour wait. The ironic thing is that we had reserved our table an hour ahead, AND had already been there an hour and STILL not eaten!!! ... So yeah, take-out would have yielded better results. 🤔

So now we were ready to order. Do so. All food was ordered at the SAME TIME, and yet..... it arrived in a haphazard manner. After JUST the kids meals were delivered, suddenly an AWESOME hot skillet of food that was my husband's order came.

A beautiful display was made of the sauce being poured over the sizzling steak, producing lots of steam. It. Looked. Delicious. But then instead of serving this wonderful dish, a tray stand was left near the table. As if the food was imminent!

But it sat there.

It was salivated over, for more than 10 minutes to make us "think" our food was coming.

It finally did come. For everyone else. But my simple soup was still not ready. Somehow. On Mother's Day.

But the "mom", on Mother's Day, is now reliving every day of her life where she is still served last. At least 10 minutes after everyone else at the table.

Then!!! They were "over the moon" when my small children returned the kids booster seats to where they belonged. And I took the compliment, but simultaneously wondered why not ONE of them stepped up the help my 5 and 3 year olds at ALL! A compliment is not a substitute for actual help in a position where they should not be doing this!!

Well.... I guess AT LEAST it truly felt like I was being treated like a...

I’d like to give them a star for effort and also one for ambience. Unfortunately, the food itself is a problem. It’s not poorly cooked necessarily but well bad decisions were made. I ate two meals here: A green curry. Although several vegetables were listed on the menu, the bowl was full of bamboo shoots which are not bad (although not common in my experience) as part of the mix but where were the peas and other vegetables that usually come with a good curry? Not here and that ruined it. Dom Kaa Gai. There were several problems with this one. First off, it was super sweet. They gave me dessert for my lunch. Next, there were almost no vegetables in it at all. It was basically just a sickly sweet bowl of coconut milk broth. She says that’s the way dom kaa is. Well I’ve had it dozens, maybe hundreds of times. Never has it ever been nearly so empty or sweet. Thirdly, there was no rice with the soup. When I asked for rice, she brought out a meager serving which amounted to no more than a snack. Upon receiving my bill, they had charged me $2.25 for that little-more-than-bite-sized portion of rice. In fairness, she says it’s not a main course but as a server if you can see that a customer is ordering something as a main course, you really should highlight that to the customer at the time that they are ordering rather than bring a meal out that includes, not only no vegetables but also no carbohydrates. I’ve often had dom kaa gai as a main course and it has ALWAYS been served with rice. She took the rice off the bill which is another reason she gets two rather than a single star but it should have never come to that. I write this long review in the hopes that this genuinely nice place could make some improvements that would make them a good restaurant. Unfortunately I don’t hold out much hope for that and won’t wait for a third strike. I am unlikely to...

I have spent time in Asia. I love its people and their food, whether at an upscale restaurant or a street vendor.

The food at Thai Spice is so-so at best, especially since they are pricey. Moreover, the manager does not understand the concept of customer service. They had a young woman taking phone orders who barely understood English and spoke it even less. It took my sister---an English teacher and social worker---10 minutes to convey our order for three people. She was on speaker so I heard both sides of the conversation.

When we returned home, I noticed my dinner of fried rice was missing. I called to reorder and had another conversation that went like “Who’s on first, What’s on second. Finally, I asked for the manger, who gave me less than a minute because she was “busy.” I requested to have the dish for free, since I had to go back across town and miss eating with the others through no fault of my own.

When I arrived, they refused me any concession except for a second Thai Iced tea, which I did not want. I asked to speak to the owner and the manger said the girl answering the phone was the owner. A blatant lie. I have met the owner. I pointed out to the manager that she had put the young lady and me in a difficult position and left it at that.

So, how does this establishment get end up with 4 stars? Well, it isn’t much of a stretch to be best out of three Thai restaurants in the North Carolina outback. Put them in Asheville and they would hardly earn 2 stars. Put them in San Francisco and they wouldn’t last a month.

P.S. The girl answering the phone was the sweetest person you would ever want to meet and trying her best. I empathized with her and tried to make it clear that she...