Chao Baan — Restaurant in St. Louis

My family and friends dined here. The experience was absolutely horrible! There was no explanation of how the menu or ordering worked. For those who haven't been the menu is a QR code and all ordering is done online. If you actually want to interact with your party this is not the place to come as everyone stares at their phone half the time trying to figure out how to order. And beware that there is no "submit" button. As soon as you add an individual dish then it's considered ordered. Suddenly food started appearing at our table. Again, instructions from a waiter would have been helpful. And all of your table's food does not come out at once. Some people were almost finished eating while others had to wait another 10 minutes. My food was so bland when it finally came that it was inedible. I was told that was the simplest dish on the menu and usually kids ordered it. It was not on the kids section of the menu. It had no seasoning whatsoever! I wish a waiter had been there at any point to discuss the menu. When I finally got someone to call over and said how bad the dish was they acted like I should have known that! I've gotten this dish in other restaurants and, while simple, it has been flavorful and delicious. I was offered soy packets for my bland dish. It was only after I complained again, as the soy did nothing, that I was offered another dish. Also we saw on their website that the restaurant was offering a 20% discount to healthcare workers. My mom is a doctor so we asked for the discount and the restaurant tried to refuse as they said the offer was old. There was no date on the offer and it was live on their own website! Never at any point were we asked if the food was good (it was not) or if we needed anything. In fact every time a waiter had to speak with us they acted like it wasn't their job! We ended up spending about $40 per person on bad Asian food when we could have gotten good Asian food much cheaper somewhere else. Then they still ask for a tip at the end even though they don't take orders, give advice on the menu, or even interact with the guests! If you hate interacting with people then this is your place! Otherwise go elsewhere if you actually want good food and service. The next time I see a QR code menu and ordering I will turn around and walk...

I wanted to start off by saying this was by far the worst experience I’ve had at any restaurant or place of business. May 28th was my birthday and my family and I decided to dine at Chao Baan on Manchester/Chouteau. My mother spoke highly of this place, and after checking the reviews I figured it would be worth the shot.

From the very beginning our waiter took our order but upon bringing the food to the table he would just drop it off without announcing who ordered which dish. This resulted in many of us having to figure this out on our own or someone at the table eating someone else’s food. With a table of 9 people this consistently happened throughout the night, but we overlooked this detail because they seemed short staffed and our waiter was giving it his all. Shortly after our bartender brings out the drinks and spills alcohol all over my 12 year old son. The drink also spilled into his food, which they didn’t offer to refund or get him placement. There was glass underneath the table, the table was wet and my son was wet. Our waiter and bartender apologized, but didn’t come over to clean the table or move us to a different table. They just kept bringing out the entrees until we asked to be seated elsewhere. There was a fruit gnat inside of my uncles drink and, shortly after my aunts order, which originally was screwed up by our waiter finally arrives and it has hair inside of it. When we mentioned the hair inside of her dish our waiter goes on to say, “The industry standard doesn’t require cooks to wear hairnets.” Everything he said from that moment on was extremely condescending and sent us over the edge.

At this point we were doing our to hold it together, but after he began disrespecting my family I asked to speak with his manager. The manager decided to discount the bill by 50% which was generous of him but overall I wouldn’t recommend this place to ANYONE. Not just because of the service but overall the food wasn’t worth the price. You could definitely do better by going...

I would give this place 0 stars if I could. The food may be halfway decent but a group of my 5 friends and I reserved a table here last night. I booked a table almost 3 days in advance knowing there were many of us and the reservation was confirmed. We showed up at 7:05 with a reservation time of 7:00 and by the time we talked to the host it was 7:13 (because we were waiting for the people in front of us to be seated). The host told us he gave away our table because there is only a 10 minute table holding time. I told him we were here and patiently waiting before the 10 minutes and were here at 7:05 but he refused to listen. I had even paid for parking and showed him my receipt as evidence we were here. I tried to reason with him as it was my birthday and had been waiting for this for several days but he simply yelled and screamed at me, claiming he could not do anything. My other friends got involved and he outright refused to seat us, and kept putting others on the waitlist. We talked to him at normal volumes and he continued to yell and scream at our entire group like a baby because we were 2 minutes late. When I asked to speak to his boss, he refused. When I asked for his name to report him, he wouldn't give it. I'm extremely disappointed in my experience here because I use to love this restaurant. I keep calling the restaurant to lodge a formal complaint because I believe he was not only extremely rude but also discriminatory.

I will never come back to this restaurant or recommend it to anyone and this place just lost one of their...