Mali Thai Kitchen — Restaurant in Sawmills

Great little Thai restaurant for us, an option we were sorely missing here! Service is fantastic, food is cooked quickly, and very well packaged for take out. Prices are perhaps a little high overall, but that is usually the case when there aren't many options. The food has mostly been very good, but the most classic Thai offering, the Pad Thai, was unfortunately not very good to us, tasting more of peanut butter than how a Pad Thai should taste. The Drunken Noodles, Pad See Ew, and ESPECIALLY the Massaman Curries, however, have all been fantastic. The Fresh Spring Rolls are also good, but the sauce is frequently broken, again tasting a lot like just peanut butter instead of a proper peanut sauce. Be careful with spice levels here, as regardless of how I've ordered it, depending on the dish, the results can be very different. A medium spicy Pad Thai had nearly no spiciness at all, while a medium Drunken Noodle or Massaman Curry were both quite spicy, around a Hot level, so be careful how you order your spice, or just elaborate to them how hot you'd like it, so they can maybe add a little more spicy to their less spicy options like the Pad Thai. All in all a great little spot I look forward to visiting several times a month,...

I drove by this place and did not know about it, so I stopped in. I was by myself and this was late into the lunch hour so it was not busy at that time. The place is clean and the service was very friendly. I ordered the lunch - red curry with chicken and an order of fresh spring rolls. The lunch comes with a fried roll that was very good. The Red Curry was outstanding. I did not specify the heat level and it was perfectly spicy! The spring rolls are made with shrimp and they were very mild in flavor, but very fresh. I recommend them! I ordered Oolong tea and it was just a hot cup of water with a tea bag, but that was the perfect amount and the tea was very nice. I will be coming back to see if the Red Curry is...

Let me say this: the food was delish.

But that price point will be the reason we won’t be coming back regularly. The price point isn’t set up for a weekly or even a bi weekly destination which is usually the desired traffic. A dinner for two, an appetizer and two drinks came to over $50. Our meals were $18.00 each, which we didn’t see printed on the menu. Which we thought was weird. We would have either consolidated our order or ordered something else if we had known. We just went to another Thai restaurant in Hickory, and it was less than $35. (Our meals were $13.00 each and were the same quality) And that restaurant had a far more inviting atmosphere that looked extremely costly, whereas this one looks like an...