The Smiling Elephant — Restaurant in Nashville-Davidson

Main Tip: If you order the dinner set, ask your server to wait till you finish your soup to bring your entree. Even if she seems like she is not paying attention make sure you ask again. We only asked one time so we didn't get to enjoy our soup! Our entree was brought to us 30 seconds after our soup.

Pros:

The owner Sam, and other older gentleman (perhaps his brother) were so very nice to us. We really appreciated how kind and caring they were to us. The 3 stars are for them.

The Pad Ka Prow was tasty even though it wasn't prepared how we asked for it to be prepared

The coconut custard that came with our set dinner menu was delicious.

Cons

Our server Yue, refused to listen to us. She completely ignored our requests.

After seeing all the amazing reviews on Yelp for The Smiling Elephant, we decided to dine here day before yesterday. Sam the owner and the other older gentleman was so very kind and welcoming to us. The other older gentleman even came to our table and took time to have a conversation with us. Made us feel so welcome.

Our server, Yue, greeted us and somehow seemed to be in such a rush. We placed our order for the Pork & Black Mushroom dumplings. We wanted to try the famous Smiling Elephant Pad Thai and wanted two dinner sets, one was the Pad Kra Pow with minced pork and the second was the Curry of the day Karee Curry. We asked both to be prepared Thai hot. We asked that we be given time between our soup and entree so that we can enjoy the soup and appetizer. My husband asked Yue to repeat our order which seems to have upset her as she was very curt after that.

Our dumplings and then soup came within a minute of each other and then our entree arrived. We did not get time to enjoy our soup at all. I was still on the soup course, my husband stopped drinking his soup and started on the Pad Kra Pao. First bite and he told me it was not spicy at all like we had requested. Yue came to our table and I told her that our dish was not spicy like we had requested. She right away pointed to the chilli flakes and told me to add that and walked away. Both our mood had turned off by then. We felt like we were not heard.

We started on our Curry next and this too was not spicy at all. The famous Pad Thai was so very sour for some reason.

Yue came to check on us once, being so very fake and asked"Is everything okayyyyy" and walked away without even waiting for us to say anything. We were so very frustrated by then and just wanted to leave. We kept waiting and waiting for our check but Yue was no where in sight. My husband walked towards the front and he said Yue was there. He asked for our check. She brought the coconut custard along with our check.

The custard was nice and hot and it was delicious.

Had we had a different server who actually took time to listen to our requests, instead of being so fake and brushing us off, our experience here would have been completely different. We did not enjoy this...

I don’t know how else to say this, but as an Asian person, this food is truly hideous. Hideous! (I have no personal vendetta against the owners or anything – just want you to be warned). We were told by an acquaintance that this was the best Thai food in Nashville and that it was life-changing. We ordered a few dishes, including the Tom Yum soup, and…I’ll just let you look at the image and judge for yourself. Tom Yum soup should be spicy and sour and sweet. The soup was truly just WATERY. There was squash/zucchini floating in the soup? NO flavor. BLAND as all HECK. Not even spicy or sour at all. literally tasted like a vegetable soup that had been simmering for all of 20 minutes. I have never had a Tom Yum soup so horribly distanced from the real thing. I mean, your friendly little bodega in rural East Tennessee can probably do a better tom yum soup. Heck, you can buy powder/cubed tom yum powder and it would be better. Maybe thinking the restaurant had messed up our order and had maybe served ANOTHER Thai soup that was airy and light, we asked the waitress, and she confirmed that yup, that WAS ACTUALLY TOM YUM SOUP. Horrified, I asked for a refund and we sent it back (the first time in my LIFE I have ever sent back a dish). They luckily did not charge for the soup, but the other dishes were also not good. The Thai salad was limp and overly-soaked in sauce and the sauce simultaneously coated the papaya but also did not penetrate the papaya, so it was just wet but biting into the papaya was absolutely flavorless. I don’t know how they messed it up so badly. When I went to pay, I was shocked the total for 3 dishes was almost $70. Horrible and overpriced. I know that the Smiling Elephant was voted as best Thai in Nashville in maybe 2011 (that’s what the sign says when you walk in), but…holy moly, the bar is low. Either standards have drastically changed since 2011, or Nashville Thai food really is just that bad. Anyways, do not come here, from one Asian person to another. You will leave unhappy, unsatisfied, confused, and...

I'd like to point out the elephant in the room...

I can't figure out why would people go here and pay these prices for tasteless Thai food. They do try to compensate in quality by loading up your plate with enough food to feed two. So if you do go try this place you might want to split a dish. That'll help minimize the sticker shock of $16 an entree. That's double the cost of any true traditional family-owned Thai place. I'd much rather have half the food for $8.. But in this case it wasn't worth having at all.

I love the flavors of Thai food and they were all missing. We tried four dishes, pineapple cashew chicken, pad thai, pad Kee mao, and stir-fry vegetable. Enjoyed 0 for 4 so that's solid enough to say I won't be back.

The house was a run down bunch of makeshift clutter which some might call this charm but it's not charming. It's uncomfortably loud, surprisingly crowded, full of junk everywhere, but frankly it just felt dirty.

We had a party of four that had four entrees and the sticky mango and It was $77 with the included credit card service fee that they claim "helps them continue to maintain quality service" lol... The waitress has not a clue about the ingredients or the menu so don't ask. Amazing with their prices .. who do they think they're fooling? So they tack this service fee on and don't tell you about (but Don't worry You should have known this because there's a sign up front amongst all the clutter that they'll be glad to tell you about if you ask after the fact) ....that fee brought it up to $79.80 before tip. And if you tip 15% That's $92 bucks for four people. Crazy.

Clearly this place gets away with it because of its location in between Berry Hill and downtown. What does that say about the people living around that area that frequent there? More reasonable and more tasty is Siam Cafe If you want an argument of where else could u go for Thai food in that area... There may be more and nowhere to go but up.

The only person left smiling after our visit was, in fact,...