Thai Garden — Restaurant in Saint Paul

I guess I'm one of the few that was under-whelmed here. I'l preface by saying that I have a very high bar with Thai food, (probably too picky) But I lived in SE Asia for 4 years and as such developed a bit of snobbery on SE Asian cuisine. After all the buzz, finally made it a point to try Thai Garden. The parking area in back is great, and a rare thing on University, always seem to be struggling for parking there. The outdoor deck looked nice, and I give them props for doing this. The place was packed and they only had two wait staff. Our waitress told us point blank there would be a long a wait. no worries on that and I was glad they were upfront about it. Started with an order of Spring rolls. The wrapper was over cooked and there was very little meat it was basically glass noodles in a rubbery wrapper, it lacked flavor and meat. It came with peanut sauce, which I don't care for . I tasted it and I believe it was house made. props for that, I just don't like it. I asked for fish sauce and was told no, albeit politely. Moved on to the country Style Salad. Again the meat portion (flank steak was very small) The salad was beautiful and appeared fresh but lacked any real flavor, too sweet and left me over all meh. Moved on to the red curry and combo pad thai. Again, fresh, but WAY TOO SALTY the pad thai was so salty we could barely eat it. I also thought the Red Curry was too salty. It had the right amount of heat (I ordered it Spicy) but only had two shrimp. (I ordered the shrimp), and was over all very pedestrian. The Thai iced coffee was too sweet and had a weird chocolate vibe to it.(too much so). My over all impression of Thai Garden is 2.5 stars. Props for having a nice big parking area, Polite and efficient wait staff, nice out door seating, and fresh ingredients. Unfortunately the taste of all the dishes I sampled fell way short. Stingy protein allocations, and...

This place is a hidden jewel!

After stopping at 2 other Thai restaurants on University Avenue last night, we spotted this place tucked in next to a liquor store, and to my extreme delight I realized it's the place I've been trying to find for years, having been here many years ago when it was under different ownership and remembering the food as being wonderful.

The place was immaculately clean and beautifully decorated, and we were the only guests at 7:30 pm on a Friday. This is most likely because of the awkward location and how hard it is to stand out on University where the restaurants are densely packed in.

We were greeted by a lovely woman and smiling chef, given the perfect corner table next to the window, and 2 waters as we perused the menu.

The menu is considerable, but all your favorites are there. We tried the ginseng coffee which was absolutely delicious, and tastes like hazelnuts.

My fiancé ordered green curry with chicken, and I went with chicken pad thai. He ordered his "hot", I went with "medium".

Our food came out FAST, and the presentation forced me to take photos. I mean I've never seen such beautiful thai food before in real life.

He ordered his hot as far as spice, and it delivered. He loved it, but just a tiny taste of his broth was wayyy too spicy for my palette.

My pad Thai was very different from any I've ever had, and I loved it. The crunch of cold fresh carrots and bean sprouts on top of the hot saucy noodles was a perfect contrast.

A few bites in, the chef actually came out to our table to ask if the food was to our liking, if the spice was enough, and to chat with us about his authentic ingredients. It was a really nice, personal touch, and it made us really feel like VIP diners.

We left with full bellies and lots of leftovers, and the bill was more than fair.

It's safe to say we have a new favorite...

We went there yesterday afternoon based on the reviews but were sorely disappointed and ended up leaving right after TRYING to order. First we ordered an appetizer of spring rolls but were told that they were out of spring rolls! Upon my asking how a Thai restaurant could be “out of spring rolls”, the server gave multiple excuses - there were only three people working, they just had a large group of people that had ordered spring rolls, they were behind. I thought this was outlandish but because we were there as a birthday lunch for someone in our party, I tried to make the best of it. As I always do when I eat at Thai food restaurants, I wanted to order the Pad Thai, but found the description of “sweet, sour, salty” on the menu confusing as I’ve never known Pad Thai to be sour OR salty. When I asked the server why they described their Pad Thai this way, she asked me what color the sauce was on the other Pad Thai I’ve eaten. I thought this was a strange question but I answered “brown I guess”. She then said “we make our Pad Thai different than everyone else and our sauce is orange”. Ummm, that sounds like a sweet & sour sauce to me. At that point, I knew this place wasn’t what the reviews seemed to indicate and we left without even completing our orders. As I’ve seen in at least one other review, i don’t understand how this place has such a high rating and it doesn’t seem this place knows how to cook Thai food. I would never recommend this place to anyone. There are many other Thai food restaurants in the Twin Cities from...