My Thai Maui — Restaurant in Maui

I would start off by saying that this review does not reflect the restaurant or food, but rather the service of the front of house staff, Matthew.

I came to this restaurant with some of my brothers and my friend as part of a trip and we found this place due to the great reviews and upon being greeted, thought this was a quirky and eccentric experience. We were greeted by Matthew, the host, who based on his interaction, you felt like was intentionally playing a bit (telling us he was late to greet us due to watching his favorite TV show, saying how ready he was to make his favorite drink, etc.). He tells us about how this is a family restaurant and how generous he is by giving us “complimentary 1/2 pint water bottles.” You look at the menu and the decor and you feel like eating here is not just about the food, but an entire experience. The flow of food starts by you ordering via app, receiving the food in takeout containers, and then sitting down. They even have trash cans for you to throw away your food once you’re done.

The food itself is decent, but quite expensive (each entree is nearly $30) and the only entree that was excellent was the Khao Soi. The fried rice and various noodles were quite average.

The issue with Matthew is how after ordering food, he came up to me and started aggressively berating myself and the group for not tipping. In the beginning, you couldn’t tell if it was his bit, until he started to raise his voice aggressively and told me how he went to Wolfgang Puck to order a $79 dollar steak and how he tips 20% despite the servers not remembering his name. He kept repeating my name over and over again, getting more aggressive to the point that the customers next to us were even uncomfortable (they ended up tipping 20% to avoid being yelled at). He later came and “apologized” by giving us Costco ice cream bars that I never asked for. How about treating your patrons and customers with some basic respect?

I had two transactions (one for food, which was $95 and one for mango sticky rice $17) and while I thought I tipped on both, I reviewed the receipts and I only tipped for the mango sticky rice. And in retrospect, I am really glad I didn’t tip for the food. Establishments like this do not deserve additional money above and beyond the already overpriced food. In total, the food cost was $110 and 20% of that $22 dollars. I hope you aggressively berating me in front of everyone was worth that money (even less than an overpriced entree of yours).

Tipping is for a service and tipping before a service is complete is not right. What if you tip before and the service is horrible? Furthermore, this place is arguable if it is even worthy of tipping. All the food is served in takeout containers, you throw away the trash yourself, and the water that is “served” is given in plastic bottles. I genuinely wondered how this restaurant would stay afloat if they are so willing to abuse customers who are overpaying already for food and my guess is that since it is Maui, it is just one and done tourists, so Matthew can continually get away with this. If you don’t believe me, you should look at some of the reviews across all Yelp, Google, etc.

I rarely ever leave reviews and comments, but it is so important that I share this with others so that they are either aware that they support a business that is not only inhospitable to paying customers, or are able to avoid it altogether. I have reposted this across Google reviews, Yelp, and TripAdvisor for...

Not even sure where to begin but I wish I could give this place negative stars. The owner, Matthew, should be banned from the restaurant industry or frankly, the entire hospitality industry. We had an eerily similar experience to all of the other 1-star reviews which ended with us having to walk out of the restaurant right after we got our food. Please also note that a lot of the other 1-star reviews are from people of color, especially of South Asian descent… coincidence?

It started when we ordered our food through the QR code that was on our table. After waiting 30 minutes and still not receiving our food, we asked the person at the window (which we now know is Matthew) if our food would be coming out shortly. He rudely told us that the food was sitting outside for 30 minutes because we didn’t follow instructions on the laminated paper that we were supposed to pick up at check-in. The paper says to scan the QR code at your table to order, which we did. We told him we did but he refused to listen, arguing that it was impossible that we followed instructions. To quote Matthew, “you may have ordered it correctly in an alternate universe, but in this universe, I am right,” and walked away. We thought it was part of his bit given the quirkiness of the restaurant. We began eating our food and Matthew came out again and this where it all escalated very quickly. He came back to the table and doubled down that he was right and kept saying we were wrong. He stood there telling all of us to raise our hands if we thought he was right. He then started to tell us how his dad taught him to apologize and got down on both knees to apologize to us but quickly turned it back against us saying that we don’t support local ethnic businesses, asking if we were going to leave a 1-star review. My fiancé responded with “maybe, if you continue to berate us” and he said, “I will not stand for customers coming in here threatening my business and I will stand up for small businesses.” Funnily enough, our brother is a local Indian small business owner and when we mentioned this to Matthew, he said “your brother should be proud because I’m standing up for small businesses.” We stopped answering and he walked away and two minutes later, he came back, got back on both knees and started sarcastically apologizing saying that he’s been going through a lot. My fiancé said thanks (instead of “it’s ok”) and Matthew told him he wasn’t a man because he didn’t accept an apology from another man and didn’t apologize back (apologize for what?). At this point, we had lost our appetite given the scene he just caused in front of the rest of the restaurant and walked out two bites into the meal. Not a big deal, the food wasn’t great anyways.

Coming from a small business, we understand how important customer service is and how detrimental bad reviews are to your business so we aren’t writing this lightly. We’ve never felt so uncomfortable and humiliated like this before. It blew our minds to read so many similar reviews, but seeing that this place has an overall 5-star rating. We’re definitely planning on escalating this as no one else deserves to be victimized by his erratic behavior.

Go support other local restaurants that respect...

ENJOY THE REVIEW. GRAB A CUPPA. THERES A LOT TO UNPACK HERE.

So me and my friends decided to visit at around 8:35pm for a takeaway order, and on arrival we had spoken with a member of staff who had advised us that we need to order online. Whilst we were placing our order we were greeted by Matthew who was an energetic character to say the least and he was very pleased to tell us that the food was going to be done quicker than a Starbucks (first red flag). He then also proceeded to show us that they don’t accept certain cards/Apple Pay etc which again was another red flag.

After my order failed, and my friends order went through I was called over by Matthew for him to say that he had been watching us on the cameras, and wondered why he hadn’t placed our order yet as he “wanted to cook the food quicker than we get a Starbucks”. This was an unpleasant greeting but Matthew and had urged me to process my order again, really quick, so he could get our order processed. He was insisting to take my phone and help me with the order, so I added the items to my basket, added my card details and showed him in the pay screen in which he took my phone and processed the order. (To mention he was hitting my phone with some power with every button he pressed).

Order placed, and the price to me seemed a bit strange so I checked the order receipt. We were charged an extra $35 without consent or acknowledgement on these charges. Matthew had added on an 18% service fee and then an additional tip of almost $14 which was crazy for a takeaway order. (It gets better)

We shortly after received our food (quicker than a Starbucks) and I wanted to confront Matthew about these extra charges but he would not let me speak! He was so persistent to give us free food/ water and would not listen to anything I had to say. He walked away and then came back under his lil counter and went through a mixture of emotions. Matthew was quick to remind me that he had been in the industry since before I was born & then also started begging on one knee saying that if we leave a 1 star review it would be damaging to the business & Sorry to tell you Matthew your service was extremely uncomfortable, strange and you deserve to be banned from ever working in a restaurant let alone running one.

We had chosen this place due to the positive reviews and after this experience we decided to dive a little deeper into the reviews (ps, if your reading this look for other reviews) they all say the same thing.

Overall Matthew is a bit of a fruit loop, made us feel uncomfortable, wouldn’t let me speak and had a weird way of handling confrontation. Feel free to dine here for a similar experience, it certainly will be somewhere we never forget and somewhere we never...