Rice and Spice Thai Street Food — Restaurant in Pineville

The short of it, this place is awesome and a must go! That being said, there are a few dishes that don't hit as hard as some of the others, so your experience may vary greatly.

This review is based after visiting this restaurant two times. For appetizers, I had the satay (chicken skewers) and the tod mun pla(Thai fish cakes). Both were good, but I preferred the satay. I found it to be more flavorful and more memorable. My gripe with the fish cakes is that they weren't nearly as good without the dipping sauce.

For the main dishes I had the roast duck curry, Pad Thai, kaeng paa (jungle curry), som tum(papaya salad), and the spicy eggplants. The two dishes that I absolutely fell in love with were the roast duck curry and the papaya salad, with the papaya salad being my favorite by a mile! The curry's flavors were bold, yet subtle and complimented the duck wonderfully. You can choose your spicy level, we did a three which was not nearly spicy enough for me. If you like your food hot, definitely go higher. As for the papaya salad, it was mind-blowingly good. So much flavor and the spiciness was perfect. It didn't clash with the flavors nor did it vie for attention. Rather it let the other flavors shine and at the very end, just when you thought it was done, your mouth is coated with spiciness that just sits there without being painful. Lovely and amazing! What made this dish even more fabulous is the addition of chicharrón, or fried pork rinds. It was the perfect vehicle for the flavors to reach their full potential and having that crunchiness as your palate is experiencing a whole spectrum of flavors was simply sublime.

My least two favorite were the jungle curry and the spicy eggplants. What I didn't like about the jungle curry is that it didn't feel like the ingredients complimented each other in taste or texture. This may be an intentional design of the dish, but it didn't click with me. As for the spicy eggplants, nothing too bad, it's just that I've had much, much better so my expectations were a lot higher.

While you are enjoying your food, I highly recommend that you try their lychee tea. It's on the sweeter side, but it's still refreshing and delicious. I honestly can't get enough of it. You won't go wrong if you opt to go with their Thai iced...

While this restaurant is fairly new to the area (a couple of months), we've already gotten takeout from their location several times. No matter the wait that night, it's always worth it.

When it comes to the menu, it's huge. No matter your preferences, R+S will, undoubtedly, have something for you.

Rice and Spice also has a full separate vegan menu to accommodate both vegetarians and vegans, with several options in each category to choose from. Our favorite dish is the drunken noodles, with a close second of the cashew nut entrée. We generally get the fresh summer rolls as an appetizer (there are two in an order of them) and sometimes the tofu triangles. Servings of each dish are generous, so we usually get a couple of things to try and have leftovers for lunch the next day!

If you're concerned about spice levels, no worries: you can choose from mild, medium, hot, and Thai hot, but be aware that mild is very not spicy, while medium has a kick that builds, and hot means hot! :)

For those with peanut allergies and cross contamination concerns, be aware that there are a bunch of dishes that contain peanuts.

In terms of takeout, there are a couple things to note. When placing your order online, they (a real person on the other end) will confirm it within five minutes or so. If they have not confirmed it, their system will cancel your order-- this happened to us within the first couple of weeks of them being open just because they were so popular that night. You can easily call them and re-place the order. Additionally, upon confirmation, you should get a time frame for when your order will be ready.

This is our favorite Thai restaurant in the CLT area already-- with friendly service and delicious food, it's...

I will start off by saying that we were very excited about having lunch here. We had heard great things and had many recommendations to eat here. We arrived around 1pm and there were a out 4 other tables already there and eating. We were shown to our seats quickly but then it took quite a while to be seen. The lady who had shown us to our seats ended up coming back and started our order. We started with the Tod Mun Plaa (Thai fish cake) and we did enjoy that.

For our entree we chose Kuay Tiew Rua (Thai Boat Noodles) I realized once we had ordered and they brought us our meal, we were never asked about spice level. I didn't think of it, but I overheard the other tables being seated and with another server, always being asked about the spice level. The portion for the entree was great and we knew we would have plenty to take home, even between the two of us. Unfortunately a couple bites in, my husband just couldn't stomach it anymore. It was a bomb of salt and Five Spice. No other flavors could be tasted. We also ordered the child's Pad Thai from the kids menu for our toddler. I'm not sure if it was because it was on the kids menu or not, but there didn't seem to be any flavor to it at all. We were never really checked on and our server never seemed as kind and communicative as she was with other tables or as the other server was with his tables. The visit definitely deflated our expectations. We are hoping that the lack of service to our table and the quality of food was just a one off. We may consider visiting again and trying...