Sabai Thai Restaurant — Restaurant in Melbourne

0 Stars

SWILL ALERT

Today, I feel like a doomed protagonist in a food tragedy gone horribly wrong. This place serves fare from Thailand, China, and Japan. The sushi roller is Thai, the cook Chinese and no one is Japanese. As I've mentioned repeatedly, sushi is only consumed in Thailand by tourists. These places tend to be hit-and-miss. This is a stand-alone; although the name is prevalent throughout the States, it is not part of a chain. At least not that my editor could find out online.

Annie is the server and handles the entire restaurant impressively without missing a beat. She is working 12 full tables. This shows you want tenacity and hard work will get you. I asked Annie for some Pad Se Eaw, Green Curry with Tofu, a J.B. Temaki Roll and one Tuna Roll.

As soon as Annie returned with my grub, I snapped a few pics and got to work. Everything looked and smelled fine. However, that is not why people eat. People eat because they are hungry and the food is good. Their offering of Pad Se Eaw was first up on the Big Boy's palate. Pad Se Eaw are stir-fried flat noodles with egg and fresh vegetables served in a Thai sweet soy sauce. If it only tasted half as good as it read, this would be a different review. As it stands, the sauce was fetid and inedible. Or maybe the noodles were bad. Regardless, I couldn't eat it.

After the failed Pad Se Eaw, I focused on the Green Curry with Tofu. I love Green Curry. Traditionally served with bell peppers, carrots, bamboo shoots, green peas, zucchini, horapha (Thai Basil), and snow peas simmered in coconut milk and green curry paste. The combination of the Green Curry zing and the Coconut Milk's sweetness is one of my favorite flavor combinations. My protein of choice for this dish was tofu. I knew this was not good in one bite as the tofu was dry. This told me it wasn't stored properly. Now, whoever made this dish knew that when they got the tofu out of the walk-in or from under the prep table and decided to serve it to me anyway. FAIL.

The J.B. Temaki roll was staring at me in anticipation, and I figured it had to get better. I wrapped my meat hooks around it and tentatively took a bite. It tasted so fishy that I checked the dumpster on the way to my car to see what smelled worse. This was waaaaaaaay past edible. Strike 3! Usually, I would call it quits at this point, but I did have one more selection to sample—their Tuna Roll. After the fishy J.B. Temaki, I was extraordinarily leery but had a job to do. SMELL YOUR SUSHI ROLLS PEOPLE. These little Thai clip joints hold the near fatal sushi for the rolls. I waived the fish under my proboscis. My nostrils just closed in sympathy with my recollection. Absolutely life threatening.

The Big Boy says, “I just spent $72.00 for an unsweetened tea! Do NOT eat...

Let me share a story about how my mistake led to an even bigger screw up by Sabai Thai:

I went here for lunch with some co-workers, and I ordered the Sabai Thai fried rice. I wanted the full portion rather than the lunch special because I am not a fan of Miso soup. I emphasized this point to the older lady who was serving us (I think she may have been the owner or manager but not sure). The server still did not understand and tried to bring me the lunch special anyway, but no big deal. We were eventually able to clarify and get on the same page, but not without some additional communication issues.

Here is my screw up: the dish comes with shrimp and chicken, but I do not like shrimp to the point where it makes me queasy. I failed to order the dish without shrimp, so naturally it came with shrimp. I was fully prepared to deal with the consequences of my error by just paying for the food and taking it home for my wife, however I still needed something to eat. I don't like to send dishes back to the kitchen for obvious reasons, but I decided to speak with the server/owner?/manager? to see if I could order another dish without the shrimp. She was very nice (so I thought) and offered to make me a new dish at no additional charge without any hesitation. I thanked her, showed much appreciation, and she took the shrimp contaminated dish from me.

Before long, a steaming replacement dish was placed on our table. I took a few bites and suddenly had the shell from a shrimp in my mouth. Of course I was very upset, but I forced myself to remain calm. I asked the server if they just picked the shrimp out and reheated then re-served the dish to me, but she insisted they had not. Clearly I did not believe her, but I somehow managed to not make a scene nor call her a liar. Ultimately, she took the entree and coffee off my bill, and I went without lunch that day. The End.

It should be noted that the restaurant seemed extremely busy and short staffed. However there is no excuse for lying to a customer and trying to deceive them into eating something that they did not want to eat. It is extremely dishonest, unethical, and gross. I would have rather paid for a new one.

On the same visit we also watched an employee quit on the spot and storm out, an upset customer walk out because she couldn't get service, and another customer was huffing and rolling their eyes about their take-out order, presumably due to the poor service. This location seemed to be coming apart at the seams on the day of our visit. I...

I'm actually surprised by all the positive reviews. This is my first negative review I've ever written, so I've given it much consideration and don't take it lightly. However, I'm very concerned about the sanitary conditions of this place. I believe they are mixing in uneaten food left by diners into other people's orders. My son ordered teriyaki beef. The dish was served with a side of broccoli. Half of the broccoli was fresh and crisp, the other half was mushy with an orange-ish sweet and spicy sauce. That sauce was nowhere else on his plate or any of our party's orders for that matter. Unfortunately, my son didn't say anything and I didn't notice before getting home. My son barely ate his food so we took home the leftovers. When I went to reheat the food for dinner I PULLED OUT A LONG BLONDE HAIR from the mushy broccoli!! NO ONE in my family has hair that would match, let along the two Asian ladies serving us at the restaurant. (I also highly doubt they have a platinum blonde chef.) I believe they thought (unfortunately, correctly) that a child would not complain about his food. The fact that they served thin rice noodles (think Chinese food) for Pad Thai is the least of my concerns about Sabai Thai. There are too many wonderful Thai restaurants in the area, even on the same road, for me to be...