The Pad Thai Stand — Restaurant in San Diego

This is going to be honest and may be the strangest 5 star review.

I'll start off by saying this is my favorite place to get pad thai. Hands down. You pick your protein, the flavor (different regions of Thailand), spice level, and if you'd like the complete ingredients.

My go to order is the Southern Shrimp Pad Thai, medium spicy, add shrimp oil, extra egg, and no bean sprouts.

Unfortunately, the other reviews are correct and for some reason, they can be inconsistent. Your pad thai can either be average, or overcooked noodles, or under sauced/bland, all the way to the best damn pad thai you may find. Ever.

That said, because the first few times I've been here I've been lucky enough (or cursed) to have been served the best pad thai I ever had, I never gave up and I kept coming back. I've had many successes, but also a few disappointments.

They've been a bit more consistent lately, and I personally think it may be related to less turnover and more consistent staff. I've also never had an issue with portions. I'm always full finishing my order.

To also address the other reviews, the service is fine most of the time. This is like a street food stall vibe and is far from a fancy spot, so I'm not expecting fine dining level of service. But unfortunately, there used to be a really rude shorter white girl that worked here - annoyingly rude, but I think she's gone now. Or I've just been fortunate enough to not be helped by her the past several visits. This should say a lot about how good their pad thai can be. I'd still keep coming back even if she was the only worker there turning out that peak pad thai.

Overall, if you're willing to take the chance, come give them a shot. Can be the best thing to...

Quick review: food was pretty good considering the very, very rude person who took our order. Longer review: We got two pad Thai to split between two people: the northern and southern style. The non-massaman flavored one (I think the southern style) was a little too sweet for me. I liked the multitude of veggies and the flavor was overall hitting the mark with tang, sweet, savory, etc etc (all the things about pad Thai that make it tasty) but nothing mind blowing. It was my first time coming there and I thoroughly enjoy cooking Thai food, so I was looking forward after hearing my friends rave about the place. The person who took our order makes it feels like you’re a burden for wanting to order and talked down to us. When I said I wanted “hot” they gave me a lecture about their spice and this and that. I said I can handle spice, and they further dismissed my capacity to handle heat in a way I’ve never experienced before lol. “I’ve been to Thailand before and know what I’m getting into too” I said, but she still talked to me like I was stupid. I never rant like this on my reviews but it took me aback how mean she was. I worked in restaurants, casual and fine dining, for a total of 5 years while I was in college and understand places get busy and stressful but she was being condescending for no reason. They weren’t hectic, there was only one other group of people here when we showed up. I checked the other reviews and saw some others complaining too; I think this is a pretty easy problem to fix, maybe they need a smoke break or something...

It literally hurts me to write this post because The Pad Thai Stand has my heart, but recently the quality of food has gone down.

This is where I like to treat myself during the week and last night I called in for a pick up order for the Northern with Chicken as my protein, and spice level medium (I forgot to ask for egg). The service was great when I picked up the food, however when I got home and started eating, I was disappointed.

The noodles were very oily and clumped together, there were no peanuts, and the chicken was oddly very chewy and a little tough. It was a different texture than I have ever had before, almost like when calamari is overcooked. Lastly, it tasted like they forgot to add the spices, peanut sauce and massaman curry. But all the bean sprouts and green onions were there.

Because I frequent here so often I realized it wasn't just an off night from the occurrences prior. Maybe a step was missed, which is understandable, but I would love for that to be checked and added or redone before I get home and notice because I CRAVE this place and it is too much of a hassle to go back and forth.

I really hope this helps because I haven't found pad thai yet that tastes like this when it is...