Makiin Thai — Restaurant in Houston

I, along with my party of 5 had a very disappointing experience at this restaurant. Brought my aunt for a late mother’s day celebration and a visiting friend for Memorial Weekend from Los Angeles for his birthday along with my husband who was also out of town and myself who just came back from Hawaii so this is really an eventful weekend for us.

At first, during the booking and changing the party from 3 to 5, it was a delightful phone experience, however when we got there we noticed it was hot right away. That was fine because its tolerable but still the men were wearing buttoned up and and long sleeve shirts. Kudos to our waitress who gave me a hand fan from her car! That is really much appreciated!

Ambience was nice, aesthetic was on point remind me of my travels to thailand a lot! Food however was so-so! Pad thai was not blended. Best sauce ever for roti though! Our waiter was knowlesgeable as well. I’m on bankok every month before in my travels and I can’t help to compare the flavors - i don’t know if they’ve taken the dish to a very safe side but interesting that i’ve eaten better dishes on the less pricier side of town.

You see we love eating out and enjoy our travels with food and dining experiences. Unfortunately, there are a couple of things we did not not appreciate here. We ordered a bunch of dishes including the market turmeric deep fried fish that they took away without asking us about it. Evidently there is still the head and tail part that we are all going to to eat and was just savoring and having conversations in between. Another part was most of us specially my aunt is obviously working on the food because her cutleries are still arranged as someone who is still working on our food they also came and asked if we are done eating, then they took the plates away. Then , we’ve been asked again 3x following that if we are working on it. Obviously, one of us managed to keep our plate and at that point we felt rushed already and decided not to even order dessert. We understand that they close at 10 and we got there by 8 and even saw a party coming in past 9 so we are aware we have time so I don’t understand what was the rush about. To top it up, by the time we were leaving they also charged us a dessert that we did not order which the manager managed to reverse after we stepped outside. With all of us leaving town again at 5am the next day, we all felt we waisted our time and specially my hard earned money coming here. I waited to be able to come ro your restaurant for a special occasion and I got really disappointed. My expectation is high given the reviews, location and price point.

I highly suggest a couple of things, inform customers in advance that there’s no ac prior to coming in or in my case informed me at least, 2nd is to add more upscale fine dining training to service staff. I want to handle this calmly and didn’t want to cause any uncomfortable situation for everyone since its a weekend of celebrationbut I hope your management will do...

TLDR: Food is terribly executed, not fresh, and both unauthentic and unoriginal . The WORST “Thai” food we’ve ever tasted. Avoid this place.

Service: good. Attentive, friendly and polite. Manager visited table after we sent one entree back. He ended up comping both entrees (he must know how bad it all is)

Atmosphere: it’s definitely a vibe. Not the vibe my wife and I were looking forward to, but the dinner-before-hitting-the-club and/or instagram pic crowd seem to enjoy. From the pictures in reviews, you could think it’s a cool, romantic, well lit and decorated new concept. Once you’re in there, you can see and feel how cheap and gaudy the decor really is. The music is too loud and not dining music. They cram customers together in certain sections, while around half of the seats are empty.

Food: Appetizer Symphony (it’s “chef’s selection, so be warned it can be anything they want to give you and not what’s in the picture, but probably doesn’t matter. It was all awful)

From top to bottom of our tower-

Cube of watermelon- the watermelon was tasteless, low quality (why you giving us watermelon in January?) that had clearly been sitting around for a couple of days so it was slimy and not crisp. Topped with tajin and I guess some other stuff. Gross.

Mystery slop- nearly gagged getting this down. Shredded chicken? Crab? Meat? Clearly thawed from frozen. Vague wet animal food flavor. (These are all designed as one bite pieces, so the whole thing went in and it was a true struggle getting it down)

Peanut butter leaf- clearly a “take” on actual true Thai dish. The only flavor was heavy peanut butter, followed by hint of spicy. No nuance, no depth of flavor. My wife searched for her napkin to spit out hers

Soylent Green brick- the pièce de résistance. The “chef” should be proud of their use of decade old cool cheffy techniques here. Tiny squeeze test tube of store bought sweet Thai chili sauce. Topped with a quail egg. The egg was admittedly well executed. The main item was a green cakey thing. Rubbery on the outside. Mushy on the inside. Little to no actual flavor. Clearly frozen and thawed. Thankfully only took a small bite of this and left the rest.

Beef Massaman Curry- so salty it was inedible. After we did, the table next to us told us they wished they had sent theirs back too because of the salt.

Crispy Garlic Chicken- waaaay overcooked. Possibly par cooked and finished to order. Despite it being chicken thighs, it was still extremely dry. The sauce was just sweet and jarred garlic. Not something I’d be happy with, even for half the exorbitant price.

Sides of rice- HOW DO YOU SCREW UP RICE?!? By serving old, dried out rice. Ugh. Any random cheap take out spot has fresh rice that is 10x better than what is...

With all my dinning experience, this is by far the worst, disrespectful, racist experience I have ever hard .. I WILL NEVER EVER GO BACK AGAIN OR EVEN RECOMMEND ANYONE THERE.. UP TO MANAGEMENT AND SERVER WERE VERY UNPROFESSIONAL.. the first drinks tasted like rotten pineapple, and when we told the server , she went to the manager and right in our faces they were smelling the drinks and laughing, which I honestly believe that was so unprofessional, aleast do that in the back not were customers are dinning and can see everything that going on, then when we ask for our bill the server indicated That we already paid , and we told her twice, that we didn’t pay, and she stated again the system said you paid, only for two second later she came back ooo, nevermind you were right, so at the point we TOLD HER I THINK YOU GUYS MIGHT WE HAVIGN A SYSTEM ISSUE, you need to check it out, then we PAID , and then she stated oo the payment is not coming, and was done again, only for her to come back again , with the manager, and causing a scene, I mean after even going above and beyond showing the banking history to show that payment went through, manager then stated yeah is saw that payment was taken out of your manager,”But our system might be having a issue we haven’t received it yet, I see you pay, but you will have to pay again or seat here till our system is fixed”, like are you kidding me, why do I have to go through such embarrassment because of your system default, but anyways we needed paying twice again.. the manager and server had no type of remorse or any empathy at all, their whole body language and behavior was like we Bunch of criminals who walked in only to eat for free and fled.. like c’om do we even look like such, why the all embarrassment, was it because we Were BLACK, am sure if it’s was another race this situation would have been completely different .. SO IF YOU ARE BLACK GOING THERR BECAREFUL AND GOOD LUCK.. ( and excuse any typo, I’m disappointed and digusted about the behavior) I don’t like to mess anyone business up, but this type of behavior is unacceptable, no one should ever experience this type of unprofessional behavior, going out only to patronize someone...