Night + Market Sahm — Restaurant in Los Angeles

I had a reservation at Night + Market Sahm for a big group to celebrate my birthday. The night began to unravel as we were seated 45 min late from our reservation time, while our group of 13 was ultimately held up by 1 couple. They didn't ask the couple to actually leave until about 35 min into the delay, even though our group had a prix fixe reservation in place with a signed agreement.

After politely checking in several times, I finally asked the hostess if we could arrange for any wine as an apology for the delay. She advised me to check in with her manager, who I asked to speak to.

When we were finally seated, I asked the waitress to direct me to their manager. When she asked me why, I told her that we had asked the hostess about comped wine, she replied "we don't comp alcohol." I told her that I would still like to speak to the manager myself to ensure there was no miscommunication about the request and my reason behind it, we felt this was reasonable.

The next person we spoke to was actually the owner, who it turns out I had been emailing. Her first few words for me were basically "I'm not sure what the mixup is but we don't comp bottles" in an extremely rude tone. I told her that the issue was with her approach despite this delay and the way she was choosing to handle the situation. It was clear that the direction the owner was going to take was to act as if they had no responsibility to uphold our reservation commitment or that any request of this nature was appropriate. Later, she tried to justify to a section of our table that the couple who held up our group appeared to be on a date that was going well. As if that has any concern to us and the large financial commitment we made to dine there instead of somewhere else. Arrangements should have been made to account for any other reservations before ours if they were interested in creating a positive dining experience.

Finally, the owner said they'd include additional "goodies" which ended up being extra food, although we had no need for this since we already had a large prix fixe menu in place. She knew what we had asked for to help reset the experience, & instead chose to take a request around some comped wine and escalate it aggressively and combatively. The best part of her saying they don't comp alcohol was that I had watched her give 2 beer bottles for free to the couple that they had to ask to leave before us.

As we were finishing up, my guests had gotten a birthday cake for me. I had previously asked in an email while confirming the reservation about the additional "cake cutting" fee of $10 pp. Night + Market had said they would waive the fee for our group. Instead of then relaying this waived fee to their staff ahead of time, the waitress told my guests that the fee would be applied. When one of my guests expressed confusion over why this couldn't be waived given the seating delay, she was asked to sit down.

On top of all of this, we received the bill at the end of the night and they tried to charge us for all the extra dishes, lol.

Isolated as individual incidents, some of this could have been understandable had this team and owner been kind and professional from the beginning. It's clear there is no regard for service here and it seems customers are being treated as if their time and money don't matter. As I read some more of these reviews, it's obvious that there is a pattern that has developed.

At the end of the reservation, I told the manager and our waitress that the evening was unprofessional and the approach was handled poorly and disrespectfully. I told them that since the owner did not want to hear my feedback or request, that it was going to be reflected in the gratuity we left, which ended up being about 14%. Truthfully, I didn't have to leave gratuity at all but that says more about me than it does about them. My group and I have dined at every Night + Market location for years and we're from LA, but this was the last time. It's unfortunate and could have all been avoided had their team chosen to be respectful and...

If you have an allergy I recommend not coming here as they are not able to accommodate. It just felt important to write because of how dangerous this was. My friend has a soy allergy and so we called ahead of our reservation to ask if night and market would be able to accommodate and were assured they could. We normally don’t even call to check, but given the restaurant’s no substitutions policy we wanted to be safe. Before ordering, we told our waitress about the soy allergy and she said she would let the kitchen know and they could make all the dishes our party ordered without soy. However, she then brought out 2 dishes with clearly brown sauces that tasted like soy to the rest of us (the green beans and pad see ew). Because the green beans said they had soy on the menu and they tasted like they did, we double checked and after checking with the chef she let us know the kitchen FORGOT. Because of this miscommunication, a manager came over to check on the table and we asked if she could talk my friend through options on the menu that did not have soy, and she immediately offered the green beans (which you’ll note, have soy). While of course it’s fine to make mistakes, because this was a health issue my friend decided not to risk it and bet that they were right on the third try. The other upsetting aspect of the experience though was the reaction from the manager. My allergic friend asked her only for a plain rice (the only thing she would have felt comfortable eating) but they never brought it. They did attempt to get her to eat other things but at that point she just felt too nervous. Once it became clear she would not eat there, it seemed like they were mad at us — it was so weird. They gave us our check without asking if we wanted dessert and without an apology or compensating for our poor experience. My very brave other friend asked if they could comp something since we thought we would be eating for 6 but only 5 of us ate (we had at least half of 3 of our dishes left). The manager said no because it “looked like the rest of us cleared our plates” and they tried to get our allergy-affected friend to eat. After a little pushback since we checked multiple times and they were mistaken multiple times, they took one dish off our check (but still no apology). It was a crazy experience honestly, just no remorse for making mistakes with a persons allergy at all even though that’s super dangerous — which is an experience I have never had. Thank god we checked as much as we did and she didn’t assume the restaurant knew how to accommodate, which restaurants...

It's a hip place so there will be a bit of a wait and tables for 2 are extremely together to one another. I had this place in my bookmarks because I watched one of those "Bring Me" Videos that had three people giving their take on the best wings in LA. One of them said Night and Market for the Peek gai Hey-ha (Party wings).

When I saw it on the menu, the more appetizing choice would have been "The World Famous Chicken Sandwich", even seeing it delivered to nearby tables made me drool for it. But I had made up my mind and had to get these wings that were highly recommended. The description for the wings is "sweet and a little salty". Well, after tasting them, that description should read "SALTY and a LITTLE sweet". I was dissapointed. It had a nice crunch from how fried it was and great meat on the inside but the flavor of the sauce was too salty.

We also ordered the "Moo Sadoong" as a recommendation from our waitress and that was DELICIOUS! That was my favorite meal of the day- it is grilled pork covered in a delicious lemony sauce that I could not stop eating.

We also had Khao Soi Rib...that was pretty good too, a bit spicy (and I LOVE SPICE)..but it was almost to the level of not really being able to enjoy the curry dish without orders of coconut sticky rice (which i recommend for any spicy dish or curry you may order from here, it's refreshing and cool to your tongue)...we decided to try an order of plain sticky rice and that was a mistake, it come out as a nice presentation in a traditional little basket but it is EXTREMELY STICKY LIKE GLUE! I would go for the coconut rice, hands down.

The beer that was pretty much on every table is the thai version of Bud Light called "Singha", pretty nice and refreshing as well since it's light.

So, in the end, I only liked the Moo Sadoong and the beer from my first experience there. Would go back just to try that chicken sandwich and maybe that will update my review up to 4...