Thaiku — Restaurant in Seattle

Walk in if you are prepared to be insulted on your face.

Zero stars for service. Five stars for food.

My wife and I came here for dinner a couple of nights ago. From the previous reviews, I was expecting a crowd and a wait and wasn't very concerned when they took a really long time to get us seated or even give us water. In fact, there actually wasn't a crowd at the time. We ordered a couple of drinks and a couple of appetizers. The server looked confused as to why we haven't ordered main course, we tell her that we will order in a bit. The drinks get served after 10 minutes. Still no sign of water or cutlery, despite asking a few times. Finally they show up and we enjoy the appetizers and the drinks.

We are done with the food and are waiting to order for the main course, trying to make eye contact with one of the servers. No one shows up, and we get busy in conversation. Finally, after about 20 minutes, the server shows up, and we ask for a couple of dishes, and she actually says rudely - "Will that be all? There are people waiting for this seat". Never have I felt so unwelcome at any place in Seattle. Firstly, you don't check with the table for 20 minutes, and then you have the courage to insult your patrons.

I really wanted to call her and cancel my order, but she was again unreachable for a long time.

Thoroughly disappointed. I have been to this place a few times before and have always enjoyed their food, and still do. But I am never coming back. They have lost a...

Thaiku is a Thai restaurant on Phinney Ridge next to El Chupacabra. It used to be on Ballard Ave and was a noodle house in Fremont before that. This location can be tough to park at, especially on weekends since street parking is difficult in this area. They have some tables outside open during nice weather and over a dozen tables inside. The service is great, the staff are super friendly. Their menu isn't massive like most other Thai food restaurants, and you can order directly from their website if you plan on picking it up. For takeout orders, the portion sizes are very small, making the price per size pretty bad. The panang curry was just a little over 1 cup with no vegetables in it, so it was actually more of a soup. The pad see ew had no vegetables in it and was only filled about 1/3 of the container, which was already a smaller container than almost all other Thai food restaurants in the area. The taste was fantastic, but the price should be half of that for the little food you get. Looking at pictures, it seems like you may get larger portions when dining in, which we might try in the future. We won't order takeout again, though, unless the portions change. Other than that, it's a solid place and would get 5 stars easily if not for...

We had panang beef, pad see ew, and pad Thai sub bean thread noodles. No vegetable in the panang or pad see ew but plenty of good quality meat. The panang was interesting-a deeper more umami taste than other Thai places. There was a cloying taste of sugar in the pad Thai but maybe it's my pregnancy palate. The portion sizes were about 1/2 to 2/3 what you typically find for the same price/quality (around 20 dollars an entree). I believe they mitigate this by serving on smaller serving plates (size of a small dinner plate) and the plate you're given to dish your food onto is a ridiculous saucer size. I wasn't blown away by any of the dishes. I've found a couple other places that have more unique dishes for similar cost/taste. Seattle restaurants don't really have a lot of stand outs in any class of cuisine and this place is par for the course. I would go here again if I was in Phinney (and I could find parking -impossible on a Friday night) and had a hankering for Thai, but likely would go to my old faithful standby on 45th for their Bangkok chicken alone, very reasonable prices, and extra...