Chai Thai Noodles Oakland — Restaurant in Oakland

Oakland seems to have a lot of Lao style restaurants and from the lot, Chai Thai Noodles, up until last year, used to be one of my favorite restaurants for noodle soups. It is located next to a park that hosts a homeless encampment so it’s not the safest place to be hanging out at least around their closing time. Over a period of time I’ve tried the Kao Poon (red coconut curry soup, rice noodles, chicken, cabbage and bean sprouts), Kao Soy Thai (yellow noodles topped with yellow curry soup and chicken), Chicken Noodle soup (chicken soup with chicken and noodles) and the Beef Noodle soup. What I really liked was they were able to cook the noodles in such a way that they would not clump-up by the time you reached home and that the soup was a tasty thick curry. My absolute favorite was the Kao Poon. It was like almost eating noodles with a curry dish.

Unfortunately something changed and this year the quality seems to have gone significantly downhill. I got the Kao Soy Thai a couple of days back and noticed a couple of differences. The box used to hold the noodles has shrunk to half the size of what it was earlier. As expected the noodles had all clumped together by the time I reached home. They had also simply dumped the crispy noodles on top of the cooked yellow noodles (rather than providing it separately) causing them to absorb all the moisture from the noodles and become soft. The soup was also pretty diluted and you could actually see two different layers in the soup container that needed to be stirred together. Goes without saying I was not happy with what I got.

Most of the Noodle soups are around the $10 mark so it’s pretty cheap (I think this year some have gone up by a couple of bucks, but it’s still pretty cheap). Unfortunately the drop in quality this year has given me reason to look for another place for my noodle soup fix. I may come back and try some of their curries and rice dishes but I’m not inclined to return for the noodle soups any more. I’m averaging out an almost 5 star rating for last year with a solid 2 star rating for this year and settling on...

I came in today, June 26, 2022 @6pm. I ordered noodles with crab (med spice), roti and limeade. Not hard to screw up.😬 My noodles had a little over a tablespoon of what was obviously canned crab. Zero spice was added and it was super bland to the bone. I absolutely couldn't eat it but I tried and failed. The roti was good but it came with a cup of yellow curry, which was gigantic compared to how much roti came to the table. The limeade is difficult to screw up unless it came in a bottle. They had a lot of GrubHub orders and six diners with ONE sever who was trying to juggle it all as best she could. I had to get her attention on several occasions. She did offer to have the cook being me another dish of my choice but I declined. I did request another roti and asked that they heat my cold curry cup. The roti came but she forgot the curry. I had to go to the cash register where she was also taking phone orders and ask for my bill. She was going to charge me for the 2nd roti and I told her that I wasn't eating it with the curry that she forgot about. I live nearby and I try to support local, minority owned businesses, especially now that gas is over $6.50 but I'd rather a great experience and great food. I paid a total of $35 for food prepared EXACTLY how I did not ask for. This place also has a growing unhoused community on the side of the building and Ivanka sized street diamonds on BOTH sides of the street. I wouldn't feel safe parking around the corner. I think that I'll skip this experience in the future because I already bought the experience AND left a...

I want to give this place a good review because the food was delicious. But the service was terrible in a bizarre way. We ordered two appetizers for the table and one dinner each for 4 people. One appetizer came first - so far so good.

But then, instead of our second appetizer, one of the 4 people's dinner came. We sat there for 10 minutes and then a second dinner came. Another 10 minutes and the 3rd dinner came. The a few minutes later and the 2nd appetizer came. Over a 20 minute+ time frame since our first of 4 dinners arrived, our 4th person still had not received her dinner (and she does not even eat the appetizer items we ordered). In order to eat together, we basically had to wait while the rest of our dinners got almost cold.

Our server did not seem to understand or acknowledge how bad this service was. He seemed to think we were complaining over nothing. I would have thought he would blame it on the kitchen and apologize. But nope we had unreasonable expectations apparently.

As I said, the food was delicious and nicely prepared. They do a big take out business. Perhaps now I know why most people take out from this place and do not eat in. I highly recommend not eating at this establishment. they do not seem to have a clue how to...