Mee-Sen Thai Eatery — Restaurant in Portland

I'm not sure that I ate at the same place as most of my fellow reviewers. While the building and the menu were the same, both the service and the food awful.

I came here with my roommate/girlfriend today for lunch. It was a nice sunny day so we sat outside: the courtyard was nearly full with diners. We decided to get the Thai salad that was from their chalkboard menu: it was $16 and had shrimp and some other special ingredients. We also ordered the pork Pad Thai and a couple of beers.

Our beers and salad arrived quickly: we sipped on the beers and awaited the Pad Thai, since we were planning to share. Once it arrived, I dished us up both a helping of the Thai Salad. What was abundantly clear was that this was a plain Thai salad: no shrimp or any other special ingredients. It wasn't an awful Thai salad, but the dressing lacked any real depth of flavor . . . all acid and no umami.

The real disappointment was the Pad Thai. Perhaps the worst I have had in years. The pork was obliterated: so overcooked it was hard to chew and it had no flavor. I pretty sure it had no seasoning whatsoever. Also, the Pad Thai sauce was perfectly bland: it tasted like it came from a can. Neither my friend nor I could detect the necessary ingredients to make a good Thai sauce: tamarind, cilantro, rice vinegar, or fish sauce. This sauce was totally one dimensional and not appetizing.

To make matters worse, the server, after bringing us our Pad Thai, never returned to the table to ask about the meal, never offerered to bring us more drinks, and never offered to bring us condiments to try to add flavor to their bland food. I eventually went and got a condiment tray.

Eventually, another waiter stopped by to give us our check. When I told him that I wasn't happy about the fact we weren't served what we ordered and that the Pad Thai was awful, he said he would talk to the manager. I gave him my credit card. He returned with the receipt and walked away without addressing either of the points I brought up with him.

While there are many ok restaurants on Mississippi Avenue (but none the ever show up on the best places to eat in PDX), many of them are really underwhelming. Both Mee Sen Thai and Yara Lebanese Cuisine are two of the worst places I have eaten at in the past 12 months. This is too bad, since I only live about a block away and I love both Thai and...

I really hate writing poor reviews for a local business but my partner and I ordered 3 items and unfortunately didn't enjoy any of them :( I don't know if we just came on a bad night but we were left truly disappointed by every component of our meal (we got takeout though, so can't speak to the service). Overall, we didn't enjoy the flavor and found the items grossly overpriced for the size of the portions you get.

Salad rolls: -We felt a bit misled because the picture shows 4 salad rolls but we received 2 -Ordered these because we saw other reviews raving about the peanut sauce.The salad roll itself is good, however, we did not care for the peanut sauce at all. The peanut sauce is SWEET. To each their own, but we found this unpleasantly sweet and unbalanced for our taste.

Peek Gai Tod (spicy basil chicken wings): -These were not spicy at all. I think a better description would be "garlic basil" -This could be due to the fact that we ordered takeout so this could be drastically different dining in, but the wings were chewy and not crispy. -Overall flavor was a bit bland and underwhelming for our taste. There was garlic and basil, but didn't taste much beyond that. None of the flavor seems to get into the chicken itself.

Pad Kee Mao: -This was the biggest offender for portion to price ratio. We paid $17, and received one of those shallow plastic takeout containers that was half-full. One person could easily finish this and still be hungry. We were taken aback as it was the smallest portion of pad kee mao we've ever received, but that it certainly not reflected in the price. -We ordered this extra spicy. I wouldn't even describe what we received as mild. The spice was virtually undetectable. -Pad Kee Mao is one of my favorite Thai dishes, but we didn't enjoy the flavor of this at all. We found it bland and not cohesive, as if each ingredient had been cooked separately and thrown together. We found most the vegetables undercooked and the egg overcooked, and the tomato in it just tasted of low-quality and imparted an unpleasant flavor.

Maybe it was a bad night for them or they are training or something. However, the portion to price alone is enough to make me not want to give them a second chance. There are far tastier and fairly priced Thai options in this area alone, so unfortunately we will...

What would have been an overall lovely evening turned out horribly. Our waitress lost our credit card while we were paying for our dinner. Now I'm understanding,I work in customer service and have for 20 years but if I lost a customers card, not only would I not deny it and act aloof, but I would find a way to make it right. We are here visiting for the weekend from out state, on a Friday night, on vacation, and don't have a national bank. Now what? We don't have our credit card to use and we have limited cash on hand for the next few days. While the manager did help look, he also simply shrugged his shoulders and just told us to cancel our card. They did nothing for us. Our service was not great to begin with as our waitress forgot some of our order, too, and this just made a turd of a situation.

I'd give a one or zero stars for the waitress and manager alone, but they do not speak for the food. The food was excellent! I just wish the rest of the staff was as competent as the cooks.

*Update, I'm changing to a one to reflect the utter negligence on the side of the restaurant. YOU LOST A CUSTOMER'S CARD!!!! AND NOT ONLY DID YOU DENY LOSING IT, YOU ACTUALLY HAD THE AUDACITY TO INSINUATE THAT IT WAS SOMETHING WE DID RATHER THAN OUR WAITRESS OWNING UP TO HER OWN MISTAKE. You utterly ruined our dining experience, which is a shame considering how amazing our food was. ONE MORE THING, AS A MANAGER, MAKE THE SITUATION RIGHT! DONT SHRUG IT OFF AND JUST TELL YOUR CUSTOMER TO CANCEL THEIR CARD. ITS a shame that the servers don't reflect that care and quality of your kitchen staff as your...