Thai Garden Restaurant-Lounge — Restaurant in Olympia

Disappointing across the board. Ordered take-out for 4 persons. The boxes were dirty. Every single one had brown or red smears all around the top and sides as if someone with dirty hands packed them. The food did not resemble Thai food at all. We had fresh rolls that were slammed together carelessly and wrapped halfway with plastic wrap for no obvious reason, and then put in a paper container. The pad thai smelled and tasted like ketchup, and although we had ordered chicken, we found a roasted shrimp tail (the shell) in it. We ordered a mango salad, which usually consists of more mangos than anything else. They had piled on hot onions and shrimp on iceberg lettuce. There was not even a quarter mango in this serving; it was more like mango garnish. It came with a liquid in a cup that had no smell but was orange-brownish. The tamarind soup also tasted watered down, but the chicken wings, pretty much standard buffalo style, were actually quite tasty, except swimming in sauce on a bed of what looked like first aid gauze, but it may have been wilted iceberg lettuce. Two of us had eaten at Thai Garden before and were unimpressed, but our favorite Basil Leaf (=BEST in town) wasn't answering the phone today. When we called about our order and wanted to leave feedback, the guy who picked up the phone just said they've done things this way for many years, and wasn't open to any feedback. This may have been the same person answering the phones and cashing people out; he did not even acknowledge the people who came in with me and stood in line; he just picked up the phone and took four orders while we were waiting (and our food also). This was a waste of money. Skip this mess and stick with Basil Leaf, Olympia's...

I took my girlfriend here to the bar here one afternoon because she loves Thai food and frankly, so do I. We were the only ones there, but they had just opened for the day so I figured why not. Our waitress pretty much ignored us the whole time, playing on her phone, but she eventually brought us our menus. Okay, so the service isn't great. That's fine. We ordered a couple appetizers and it took 25 mins for them to get out of the kitchen. This is a little long, but again whatever.

It got bad when they brought us our extra plates. They were dirty! We just didn't use them and stacked them under the other plates. The dipping sauces for the apps were just poorly executed. Sugar water and bitter sugar water, bland flavor, missing any reminiscence of sour or spicy you'd expect from Thai food. Even the tapwater tasted like it had sat out for days in a plastic container.

When we got our entrée, it was cheap noodles with sugar sauce and overcooked vegetables. It tasted exactly like the dipping sauce, with stringy broccoli and dried out chicken. We asked for sharing plates, and again, they were dirty! What kind of restaurant is this?

But the icing on the cake was once we had finished our entrée a chef walked out into the bar area and behind a room divider where they pulled open the stand-up freezer they keep all the ingredients in. Frozen vegetables, frozen meat, and frozen sauce. I could make these dishes in less time than it took them to make it with freezer meals from the grocery store, and I'd pay much less than the $40 it was for dinner. And they don't even hide it from customers. They don't have room in the kitchen for all the frozen food they use! Don't you...

Quality has Gone Down Hill. I've eaten at this location and the original location inside the mall. The last dozen times we have visited the restaurant the food quality is noticeably worse and worse. We've tried each of these dishes multiple times during those visits and over a years time to make sure it was not a fluke. Let's begin with the Fish In Clay Pot - this was their signature dish, none like it anywhere else. It consisted of a large portion of fish and filled the pot 3/4 of the way. Last few years it has become onions in a clay pot with some fish. More onions than fish and about half full pot. Then there is the Pan Fried Spicy Calamari, great dish originally, with plenty of calamari and a good balance of other vegetables and just the right spice. Now it is more veggies, less calamari, calamari is no longer crispy - the balance of taste is gone. Last straw was Seafood Fried Rice, the dish was made wrong the first time. After a 45- minute wait, and the rest of my party had finished their meals, the replacement dish arrived. Fried rice was burnt, hard and tasted like dirt - I just hoped it was not 'recycled' off other's plates like another well known downtown Oly Thai restaurant. The seafood in the dish was sparse, over cooked, chewy. Four tail-on shrimp, one scallop, two calamari 'strips', and two 'fish balls'. Not worth $13. Obviously, the entire party decided not to return to this...