Sirinna's Thai Kitchen — Restaurant in Summerville

Edit for response to restaurant: My review was completely honest. You can sugarcoat your rebuttal as much as you want, but it will not change the facts. -‐---------------Review Below‐-----------

We ordered shrimp tempura for an appetizer. She ordered some curry chicken plate, and I asked if they could make a basil duck plate. (They only had a basil fried rice or a duck fried rice.) Waitress comes back and says yes, they can make the plate, but would charge $9 more for the duck. Hmm. Okay. After about a half and hour, we still hadn't received our appetizer. (There were only two other tables being served, mind you, and there were two waitresses. ) We finally flag down the second waitress (not ours) and ask about our shrimp. She smiles and nods like she understands... then heads off. Our original waitress comes over and tells us she didn't hear us order the shrimp tempura... and that our entrees are now ready. Do we still want the shrimp tempura dropped in the fryer?

What? Uh, no. Just bring our food.

My sister's plate comes out, looks awesome. My plate arrives and you cannot see any duck. Apparently, they chopped it up and mixed it into the rice. I dig around and find the 5 small chunks of duck and eat them. The rice.... ugh. Awful. The basil that was in it was burnt. I couldn't eat it.

Kept trying to get our waitresses' attention, to have her take the rice off the bill. She keeps running around avoiding eye contact. Finally, I get up and take the plate to the register, where a small blond man is standing next to our waitress. I explain to them both that I am not eating the plate of rice because it does not taste good, and to remove it from the bill. They ask if they can make something else, and I tell them no. Then, I say, you know what, yeah, drop that tempura you never brought. So they agree, and I go sit back down. A little later, the shrimp tempura is brought to the table. Excellent flavor and crunch.

Here's where it really starts to unravel...

They bring the bill and the waitress says they gave us a discount for the uneaten rice. She is waiting to see if my sister still wants to order something to go for her husband. I take a look at the bill and there is a $6 credit. 6 dollars. They charged $16.95 for my rice plate $9 extra for the duck AND $9.25 for the shrimp tempura. I was like, nope.

Told the waitress the $16.95 needs to come off. I did not eat that rice. Willing to pay for the rest (even though the tempura was offered comp by waitress).

She goes to talk to manager. Comes back with this wide-eyed scared look and says, "manager is out tonight, so I'm the manager, and this $6 is the best I can do."

Lol. Really? You're now the manager?

Unbelievable.

I tell her, well, who's over you tonight? And she says "the owner."

I'm like, great, get the owner.

Another 20 minutes waiting at our table. Finally, I walk back up to the register, where the short blond man and the blond waitress are discussing my ticket.

I'm like, "Listen, we've been waiting a long time. Do you have this fixed, or what?"

The short blond man, (apparently the 'owner') proceeds to berate me, telling me he doesn't have to provide any discount, they food is the best around, and my rice wasn't bad. The chef comes out chimes in, that yeah, just because YOU don't like the rice doesn't mean it's bad.

What? It was awful! And you don't need to talk to me that way!

Then he says, "I could just call the cops."

What??! Really? Really!!?? Did you just threaten me with the police!? Jerk.

He shows the ticket, where he has taken off the shrimp tempura cost, and the other $6? At this point, I'm like, you know what, great, thanks, let's just pay and go.

I leave my sister there to pay, while I go outside to cool down. She's got the keys, so I'm just standing there, stewing, waiting. Good grief, what else needs to be said in there?

I walk back in, and ask, "Are we done? Can we go?"

And the little blond man has the nerve to try to apologize and ask if we might come again sometime to give them another chance.

Um, no? You blew...

Pretty disappointed to be honest. We have been wanting to pop in for awhile based on our love of Thai food and the outstanding ratings here, but overall turned out to be a miss for us. Arrived and was greeted/seated after just a minute of waiting. Hostess took our drink order (two waters) but never returned. Our server came over and he brought them out. He was friendly enough, took our simple order with ease. It took about 25 minutes for our two entrees to arrive. They both looked decent overall. My partner asked for chopsticks and our waiter brought back one set. Before I could ask for some he had walked off. While I would have preferred the chopsticks, I did have a fork, so no biggie. I was disappointed with my Thai Basil Tofu (my favorite dish). While the veggies were cooked well, there were only three pieces of basil and seven small (say half-bite size) pieces of tofu. A note on spice level... this always has the potential to be tough because personal tastes vary greatly. The menu has the spice scale: Mild -0, Medium -6/7. Thai hot -9. I ordered a 3/4 saying that I like a little bit of heat but I don't want my mouth and lips burning. Personally, I felt like mine was too spicy. There were a few bites that were way hotter than "medium" and I hadn't ordered medium. Ok, I figured that one is on me, and I can solve the problem by ordering a Thai Tea. Except our waiter never came back. Not once. Didn't check if the food was ok, didn't refill our waters, not even a pass by the table in range to flag him down. The hostess finally came by as we were finishing up to ask if we wanted boxes. We said no, we were finishing the last of our food. A bit later she returned asking again if we wanted boxes (though all that was left was a few bites of rice on my plate and a squeezed lime on my partner's). We were originally excited about dessert but decided to pass given the lack of service and disappointing meals. We asked for the check. Our waiter finally returned at that point and thanked us for our patience as they were "so busy" and had "been slammed with take out orders." I can absolutely sympathize if that's the case but while we were there, five tables (including us) were occupied and about six or seven people came in to pick up single-bag take out orders (I was sitting directly facing the door). If the equivalent of a dozen or so "tables" over an hour and a half is "slammed" what do they do when the restaurant is full? Again, I can absolutely sympathize when a place is busy and there's a lot going on, but having no one come by our table cost them us ordering a drink and two desserts. You've got to check in with your patrons. My partner had Pad Thai and said it was decent but very sweet. I tried a bite and agreed, it would have been too sweet for me. While the portions seemed ok at first, we both left still a little hungry and picked up dessert somewhere else. We unfortunately won't...

We were really excited to try this place because we saw it had a lot of gluten free options since my husband has celiac. Clean and vibrant place upon entering, it’s kind of tucked in the corner of a shopping center off trolley road. We sat ourselves and our server was very friendly and offered us a separate gluten free menu which was really nice. We ordered shumai, GF spring rolls, GF pad Thai, GF massaman curry, and GF basil fried rice. Spring rolls - crispy, made with rice paper and it was good with the lettuce and sauce. Shumai - I could tell they were homemade which I was super excited for but a bit disappointed with the texture. It’s hard to explain but I think they were folded too tight, over stuffed or undercooked. The part where the folds meet we’re not really edible and very chewy. They didn’t have that nice soft steamy texture that I’m used to with Shumai. The flavors were good. The sauce was WAY too sweet for a dumpling sauce. It needed vinegar and salt and just to be more balanced. I actually could not enjoy it with that sauce so I made my own and asked for a side of vinegar. Massaman curry - very loose for a “curry” Ive never had a Thai curry that was more of a broth soup like texture. Although the flavor was good, it just was missing that depth and richness you get in a Thai curry. I like it to be more creamy where it coats the rice nicely and not just pooling at the bottom. Again everything in it was cooked very well, but just thrown off by how brothy it was. It actually reminded me of a Vietnamese curry my mom makes because our version is more loose and broth like because we eat it with rice noodles. Basil fried rice- they made it wrong the first time without the right ingredients but when the right one came out it was very good. This dish had the most balanced flavors and we enjoyed this a lot. Pad Thai - we’ve had A LOT of pad Thai and the flavors have varied all across the board. But when it comes to pad Thai you should taste tamarind and fish sauce. IMO 🤷🏻‍♀️ I’m not sure if it was because it was Gluten free but the flavors here were very mild. Sauce was a bit loose and didn’t caramelize the noodles but it wasn’t like a bad taste. Like it still tasted pleasant but it didn’t quite taste like pad Thai. Some likes and more chili flakes did the trick but it was easy to eat.

Overall we still enjoyed the food and service, we are happy they had GF options but we just weren’t wowed because of the lack of flavors we normally enjoy...