Thai Papaya Restaurant — Restaurant in Indianapolis

So I was expecting this place to be semi-authentic based on all the good reviews, but it failed. I ordered Pad Thai and Tom Yum Goong. They then told me they were out of shrimp, so I got Tom Yum Gai instead. What, a Thai restaurant without shrimp? This cannot be! The soup came out with all of three visible chunks of chicken, but LOADED with tomatoes. There are NO TOMATOES in the Thai version of this soup, why do they keep adding them in Indiana??? It was also not sour enough, needed more galangal paste and to have the lemongrass crushed up more. Although it had a visible layer of chili on top, it was much less spicy than it should have been--looked like they just loaded it with Chinese roasted chili-oil sauce instead of dry thai chili pepper. I ordered it "pet pet," which means hot-hot in Thai; I wonder if these people even are Thai based on the fact that it was so wimpy in spice. The pad thai had decent flavor (better than that Sawasdee place nearby) but was even less spicy, I would call it mild, and it lacked tamarind and preserved turnip (pad thai in Bangkok is purple-ish from the preserved turnip). I brought home the leftover pad thai, but it was really greasy so I tossed it out. On top of all this the restaurant was kind of dirty and messy looking inside, which makes you wonder about the sanitation in the kitchen, and it's right next to Subway, so it smelled like yeast bread. I won't be returning...

The uh curry pumpkin with chicken that I had was so so great. I really dig the pumpkin in there.It's like a touch of sweetness, but also a little bit of almost bitter. But the chunks, we're perfect size, not mush, and not undercooked. Great flavor and the amount of red curry broth with coconut milk they gave you is as it should be. Enough to order another thing of rice and have it soak it all up. My staple, the chicken satae had nice flavor but not enough. The chicken was tender but stringy. The peanut sauce was okay. Not very strong in peanut flavor not creamy, not much spice, lacking. The beef pad thai was a fantastic portion, a little too charred on many of the pieces, I don't need my egg charred to a crisp. Very close to burnt. Had to ask for sliver of Lime. Which is usually a staple. It def helped. All in all, nice flavor though. The hot ginger tea was...

Really good! Small restaurant so, if you're going for lunch you might have to wait for a seat. I ordered the pan noodles with chicken and got the "spicy" or "medium" level of heat. I found this perfect for my taste, but might try "hot" next time just to see if I would like it more. They have one more level "Very hot" which would probably (for me) be too hot for my taste. A fellow diner at my table ordered "mild" which she believe had zero heat whatsoever. So remember "mild" means nothing - and "spicy" means medium. Price was about $12 for the dish and included a choice of egg roll, salad, or soup. I chose the egg roll and it was tiny, but delicious. We all ordered "bubble tea's" to go and were quite pleased with them. Will...