Seng Tong Thai — Restaurant in Seattle

I wanted to start off stating - I grew up in a family business, a small mom and pops restaurant and I have worked in many food service businesses growing up and although I can also have off-days, I strive to be the best as my service represents the business, and the service I provide is what is also helping me pay my bills at the end of the day. Because I know what it's like to the T about the server life, I also am very understanding and patient especially if the store is busy. However, I do think it is important that employees in the food industry, especially customer-facing, require basic manners such as 1) greeting the customers when there is a "please wait to be seated sign", 2) provide utensils / water at least within ~5 mins of being seated, and 3) serving food as it's ready to prevent serving cold food that's been waiting on the bar.

I grew up in Seattle and the thai food scene here is wonderful. I was touring the city with a friend from out of town, and I always knew there was a thai spot next to Din Tai Fung in the pacific center building and wanted to give it a try since we both love thai food. I was proud to show them the thai seattle scene.

I went in yesterday, and there were two servers hosting the area + a couple open tables. We were waiting in front of the entrance and sign for 15 minutes without even being acknowledged - not even eye contact. We noticed the male server had headphones in. I was trying my best to make eye contact and smile to let them know we were patiently waiting, but it would have been nice to know how long we would have to wait (especially when there were ~4 tables open.

We ordered 3 dishes + drinks, our drinks didn't even arrive until the customers who were seated after us (about 20 minutes) ordered the same drinks which I assume they made at the same time as the table behind us. Again, understandable.

By the time our food came, the fried dish was cold. It was good, but it would have been nice to be served warm food. The food and drinks were good (hence the 2 stars), but as this location is in the center of seattle (walkable distance from downtown), I expect better service as this is a reachable spot especially for a lot of tourists.

If you are visiting Seattle and can walk/drive a bit further in downtown, I highly recommend Bangrok Thai or Isarn Thai for the best thai experience...

Update: the rude waitress found my social media and is harassing me. I will seek police action if she doesn’t leave me alone. It’s crazy work that after everything she did, she reached out insulting my friend and challenging/threatening me to “come say it to her face”?!! … this review would’ve been very different even after the harassment had she just apologized instead of continuing to fight, I don’t feel safe because of her now.

The Asian waitress with the long ponytail was very rude since we arrived for no reason. We weren’t greeted, we didn’t get water refills from her, she gave us rude looks, and she filled all of our drinks to the top with ice. We were nice to her, cleaned up our own dishes and table before we left, and were very low maintenance customers- not that any customer deserves that treatment. She needs some customer service training or a new job. No tip deserved there.

The food was amazing, and the guy in the back (manager?) who kept telling her to come to us or coming himself to do it for her was very sweet. He made the experience a bit better :)

Have been a loyal customer of Seng Tong for a while, very saddened to have to share a negative...

Excellent spring rolls but some of the worst pad ka pow I've ever had the misfortune of buying. They ruined the mushrooms somehow? And the onion is virtually uncooked. The dish tasted less like anything from a Thai restaurant and more like something from a very bad american steak house. Not sure if they took my request for no bellpepper due to allergy as a prohibition on chillis (I can eat chilis fine), but it was. Just really very bad. I don't think I can grant them that excuse tbh, the mushrooms were so incompetently botched... I love mushrooms and had been looking forward to them. This was really bad. The sauce was a miserable affair that just. Didn't have any recognizable pad gra pow taste. It's my favorite food, period, since I was really little. I've had it prepared a lot of different ways. This tasted like something served at a bad steak house, not a Thai restaurant.

The spring rolls were good, though, so I guess...