Tuk Tuk Thai Kitchen — Restaurant in Seattle

I dined in and took some takeout back to my family. Sat at the counter. It was fun to watch them cook, and to hear Thai being spoken. The kitchen was clean and ingredients appeared fresh.

Ok, first off, I just want to say thank you to the new owners. It’s hard to run a restaurant. The margins are thin in any city, but in Seattle it’s even thinner. But soo many businesses in Magnolia seem to suffer from low-ambition rather than margin challenges. I moved here nearly 10 years ago thinking that surely there will be some more vitality to the bar and restaurant scene in Magnolia/Interbay in a few years. But very little has changed. My plea is for more to just simply TRY. This place tried and they will be rewarded. Nothing fancy. Just small, reasonable, thoughtful upgrades, and investments have paid off. It is actually an atmosphere I can see myself going back to with friends or family. It’s not like the vibes blow you away, but you can tell they care enough to do what they can to improve the experience for their customers. It will take a little time for their rating to catch up.

Spice star inflation is still in effect, but not as bad as many. My 4 star tasted like a three star, husband said his 5 star tasted like a 3. Your mileage may vary.

Some better beers would go a long way to rounding out the experience.

Just one random person’s assessment: In a number of areas, the flavor/richness could stand to be bumped up a little. Curry and peanut sauce was super tasty, but also a little thin. Stir fried dishes seemed like they could use just a little higher heat/more time to get some char and caramelization. Fresh rolls were super tasty, but a touch more herbs would give a lot of bang for the buck.

Kids Menu was kind of funny. As a general plea to all restaurants, stop making kids menus so ridiculous. Kids eat more than fried chicken, I promise. It should be very simple: starch, veggie, protein, something fried and/or sweet. And you can serve a maller portion sizes than you think. Eating out with kids sucks in Seattle because you end up having to order a whole meal ($), cobble something together leveraging sides ($ and annoying), or get stuck with chicken nuggets or pizza. And most of the time they don’t finish. In restaurant, it’s easy to make kids reasonable portions on a plate. In a to go container it would look a little sad. So maybe do some small divided bento type boxes. That would also prevent your delicious fried things from getting quite so soggy from sitting in the same container with the rice. Seriously, places that are thoughtful about how to feed kids have a huge leg-up for repeat business (dine in and takeout)

Dinner for me, my husband and our daughter came to $90. Although we did have enough leftovers for another meal, so…in that way it was both expensive feeling when we signed the check but actually affordable by Seattle standards when we realized we solved two meals. Depends on your attitude about...

TL;DR: Excellent Thai food, everything we had was perfect. Seriously, don't miss this place.

I never order Pineapple Fried Rice because I just don't like fried rice. For some odd reason, I ordered it last evening. Tuk Tuk is now my gold standard for Pineapple Fried Rice. The curry they use is something magical. There is just something special going on with that rice.

The Kee Mao is... this is hard to describe. It is not the best Kee Mao I ever had, but it is the most ideal Kee Mao I have ever had. When I think about Kee Mao, Tuk Tuk's execution is exactly the dish that I imagine. The noodles, meat, seasoning, texture, balance of ingredient quantities, level of spice (I ordered 4/5)... all categorically perfect. This is also now my standard by which all Kee Mao will be compared.

The Panang curry, the larb, garlic pepper are all superb. The textures and seasoning are the platonic ideal of Thai food. I also don't normally order pork because so many restaurants do it poorly. Again, for some odd reason, I ordered two dishes with pork and was blown away. This is what I expect from Thai food and pork.

Somebody there likes what they do. There is obvious thought and care in the dishes, the timing of our dishes was spot on, the presentation was excellent. So...

We found ourselves in a neighborhood we're not familiar with, we wanted to eat before we continued on with our day so we ducked in here, we love Thai food. All the food was okay - good. And I may have considered coming back here except for the fact that when I asked for a little extra peanut sauce for our spring rolls they brought us a soup bowl filled to the top of peanut sauce! I was like ....what!! When I get the check I was surprised to see that they have charged $3 for the extra sauce. There is no way we needed that much there was only one spring roll a piece. I wouldn't have minded paying $0.50 or $1.00 for it and receiving a much smaller portion. I see most Thai places put a squeeze bottle on the table and you can help yourself. So I thought it was very odd they would give that huge amount for two rolls. We thought that was very rude to not tell us how much we were getting and what it would cost. I felt they were trying to pad our bill. But in defense of the peanut sauce it was very good! But she could have at least told us that it would cost us $3. Then again our waitress just didn't seem very interested in us or what she was serving. That's too bad, I know it's hard to run a restaurant these days and there are so many places...