Thai Spoons — Restaurant in Sunnyvale

A neighborhood place that seems to do a lot of takeouts, which I later realized why - the service is terrible! It is a small and inexpensive neighborhood place so I am not expecting Michelin star service. But I have seen bigger restaurants with the same number of staff make do by being organized. I went 30 minutes before closing on a Tuesday night, it took them a while to clean the vacant tables and get me seated with a menu. Then it took forever for someone to take my order; I would have walked out if I weren't hungry and everywhere else was closing. My water never came, and I had to ask for it again when they delivered my food. Then they realized I didn't have a fork and napkin. Isn't it all done backwards? Most restaurants would set your table up with napkin and cutlery before seating you down with a menu. And bring you water while checking to see if you'd like any other beverage. The drinks would also arrive before your food comes. Anyway, I wasn't the only one frustrated with the slow service, Two tables around me rustled impatiently as they waited to get the check and to-go boxes. The waiter kept apologizing to them. They are just all over the place, and there is no good reason as it is a small restaurant! I will return, but only to do takeout, as the food is actually quite tasty, but the service is worse than pathetic. You will need to have the patience of a saint, or just have all the time in the world. Not a place to have...

My friends and I came here for dinner so we had everything family style, which was great because it kept the price low. For the most part, everything was decently good, and not amazingly spectacular, but there were items that stood out still. Some of my friends that lived in Sunnyvale were frequent visitors and mentioned how much they returned because they liked the food, and I could definitely see why.

To me, the pad see ew and the red curry tasted very authentic and very similar to what I have had in other Thai restaurants across the country, which was a good thing and I definitely had nothing to complain. I thought the spicy fried rice was really good because it had a level of spice that provided flavor instead of overwhelmingly spicy and nothing else, if that makes sense. I also enjoyed the mango & sticky rice, but would love a bit more rice and coconut milk because there was a good amount of fresh mango.

Otherwise, I don't have other comments because I don't know what else to say other than the fact that this is a very authentic small Thai restaurant and I think that by itself should be a good indicator that it's worth...

On 12/30/21 we ordered $100 of food and it was a mixed bag. Since I'm generally an optimist, I'll start with the positives: garlic string beans were supper yummy and all portions are somewhat generous. Our favorite Thai place closed during the pandemic and my daughter likes Thai Spoons. Their Pad See Ew is very tasty.

Now onto the major disappointments. Did I mention we love their Pad See Ew? Well we ordered 2 and got Pad Woon Sen instead! I'm not a fan of silver noodles and we were extremely dissatisfied with this mistake. They don't even sound the same so how did that happen?! ...My benchmark for all Thai restaurants is Thai Basil Chicken (got to be made with ground chicken). Well Thai Spoons has their version where the sauce is "soupy" and bland - you can barely taste any Basil at all. Worse yet, they make it with celery so this time we asked them to remove it. But to no avail, it was nothing like most every other places with a dark sauce that is salty, sweet and spicy all wrapped up in one! Instead, here it is white and...