Mom's Siam — Restaurant in Richmond

I was really hoping this place would be good. It felt like I started rolling Luck dice the moment we stepped through the door. First roll: unlucky. Happened to show up when the place smelled like fragrant floor cleaner that coated the inside of my nose. The hostess asked if we wanted to sit by the door (which was cold) or in a booth in the back. We chose the back booth.. second roll of the dice?: unlucky again. It was right next to the kitchen, which would have been totally fine if it didn’t also smell strongly of cleaner. I could taste it now. Third roll of the dice is for music. Roll?: critical fail. What do we get? Alternative Pop Country. The absolute worst thing they could have been playing, especially in an ambient Thai restaurant. Should this have been the sign to leave? Probably. What did I do instead? Ordered alcohol. Fourth roll goes for a drink: close, but no luck here either! Happened to order a drink with dairy in it, no indication that this could even be possible. Mind you, my tolerance for dairy is weaker than my will to live, which is hard to beat. There are two things worth mentioning here: 1.Their entire food menu had a symbol for every allergen in each dish, so I would assume any allergen concern would be noted for all menu items. 2.The drink I ordered was from a brand called Yoju, cleverly named after the contents of the drink itself which is a combination Yogurt and Soju. Obviously! Well, maybe obvious to someone who was familiar with this beverage prior to ordering it, but that “someone” was not me. Nothing could have told me that there would be dairy in the drink until I took a sip and read the fine print on the can itself. You can blame me for not knowing what Yoju was if you want. I did explain the situation to the server and asked for the drink menu back, but did not directly ask for the guy to consider taking the drink off of the tab. I’ve been in the service industry for almost a decade and personally would have done that out of courtesy. Can’t expect that from everyone though, but I also can’t blame the server; he didn’t even look old enough to order the drink for himself. I ended up sticking with my water. My partner did get the nonalcoholic ginger mimosa (ginger beer and orange juice) that was tasty enough. Alright, continuing to our roll for the entire reason we even walked in. Food?: Finally landing some luck! Got the fresh rolls, Pad See Ew, and the Pad Poy Sian, all pretty damn good and decent portions. The prices were around what I expected but it was still a guessing game because they weren’t all that clear on the menu. Now we have come to the sixth and final roll of the night.. The bill: totaled at $85. Paid for my $8 death-in-a-can that wasn’t touched, as expected. However, what I wasn't expecting was for the kid to take my card before even seeing the bill. Turns out, you get cashed out at your table with handheld iPads that never leave the servers’ hands and I wasn't given the total until after the card was swiped. That definitely felt shifty. Plus, the ONLY tipping options were pre-calculated at 20% and higher. It’s not like I would have skipped a tip entirely, I’m usually a huge advocate for tipping 25% MINIMUM (again, I’ve been in the service industry for far too long) but I was genuinely dissatisfied with the place and with the service, so much so that I was having a hard time enjoying the good food. I rarely leave a restaurant feeling disappointed, but I had a deep feeling of regret in my gut when we left (and no, it wasn’t the Yoju.) I think I had a better chance at testing my luck with a scratch ticket. It would have cost me...

Not family friendly. This is my first 1 star review. First, we called to ensure their AC worked as the last Thai place down the street didn’t. They said their’s did. We walked 5 blocks to get to Mom’s Siam and to our surprise they didn’t have AC, it was broke. The person on the phone had to know this. The place was quite hot. We’re a family of 5 and we eat out a lot, and we were clearly hot and exhausted as we walked in with 3 hungry very well behaved kids. We asked for a cool spot and were walked right by an empty table with a fan blowing on it to a table right by the kitchen. We could feel the heat coming from the kitchen. I was slightly confused, and started to suspect disrespect, but for what I didn’t know. We order apps and our meal quickly as we eat Thai a lot, and we knew what we wanted. We order 2 Thai iced teas and I told the waiter we will slam them cause we’re so hot and to get ready to burning more cause we will drink like 5 - I was joking. Amazingly he shows up with premixed Thai iced teas (unusual) with NO ice - even more unusual. Then he brings out the Tom Kha Kai soup with no spoons. I asked for a spoon, it took over 10 minutes to get it. And although the waiter confirmed they could make crispy basil duck (a Thai standard) what I got was under cooked duck not breaded and fried. The waiter kinda laughed when I pointed this out while looking at our entirely polite children. It was obvious these young guys were not interested in their half assed bar being considered a restaurant for middle aged families, but a trendy bar, which it wasn’t. The bar was empty. The root of these mistakes are either incompetence, or disrespect either way they are noteworthy to anyone considering enjoying a dinner there.

Again. This is literally my first bad review. I did speak to the manager - ugh. Something I never thought I’d do. He said he answered the phone. It was him that lied about having a working AC. He just made excuses for the waiters behavior.

We learned after many years of being foodies that the most disappointing restaurants are usually found on the “main drag”, amid the popular shops, while the best are normally a few blocks away. This is now a fact we won’t...

my partner and i ordered two drinks (2 mules, at that!) and ordered our food about 10 minutes after, and the drinks still had not arrived. there was one other table in the restaurant and one person at the bar. about after 15 more minutes our food came and the drinks were still not there. our server then brought the drinks. it was clear that the bartender was not interested with making drinks at all and we felt bad that that reflected on our server. then, there was a fruit fly in my drink so we attempted to grab our server but literally could not. as we were eating, we found a cat hair in the food (we have a golden doodle, no cats) and were very annoyed at this point. we still could not find our server so my partner went up to the bar to grab them and asked them if they could remake the drink and food. we felt bad but it was already such a mess in there that we felt fine doing so. the drink, again took so long and we saw our server ask the bartender “have you made my cocktail yet?” we have both worked in service so we know how frustrating this can be. we got a remake probably 10 minutes later and a new entree which the server comped! very nice. there was also no music playing and the bartender was having a very loud conversation with their buddy at the bar, which literally caused the table behind us (the only other one in there) to turn to us and ask if we were hearing this! all in all, bad vibes and just very annoying overall. we thought the server was very nice and shy and it was clear that she was trying her best but very over it so we still tipped very very well (we’re not awful people, just disappointed with this establishment, which is obviously not her fault) also, the spring rolls are advertised as 4pc but are 2pc poorly cut in half, and some parts of the noodle dish were straight up cold and others were very hot (giving microwave) so overall very strange place. will not return...