Karuna's Thai Plate — Restaurant in Tucson

Karuna's is one of my top 5 favorite places to eat. I saw a lot of reviews about wait times, not getting water and bad service. I don't ever go in for any of these things. I go in for the delicious authentic food for a very cheap price.

Generally there is one waitress and 1 or maybe 2 people in the kitchen.

You just have to know how to "work" Karuna's. Here's my opinion on when to go, or not.

With the Lunch Buffet, you will never have to wait, and if you haven't been brought water, just go up to the counter and ask. This is a pretty normal thing for Karuna's. She usually has glasses of water ready up front. The food is generally pretty stocked and there are meat options on one side and Veggie options on the other. Their tofu is AMAZING.

If you have time to sit and wait and maybe you're semi hungry but not too hungry yet, go in and sit down. Yes it may take a while, but please understand with small local place like this, when there is only ONE waitress, you need to be patient and understanding. This is not a big corporate restaurant. (also, yes sometimes one of them can come off rude, however I think it is just more that she is insanely busy)

IF you don't have time to wait, call in an order and wait about 10 minutes longer than they say to come pick it up. I DO NOT SUGGEST CALLING IN AN ORDER FOR LUNCH!!!! FIRST because they don't open until 12:00 p.m. and SECOND They are very busy over lunch, you're going to wait.

I just can't seem to deal with these reviews with people getting upset at wait times, service, etc. when this place is 1. super cheap 2. there is ONE waitress and that's pretty obvious when you are there 3. IT is a local business working with the little amount of man power that they have.

The food is amazing. Just be a kind person and practice some patience while you're there. Clearly a lot of...

Just tried it out today. For Tucson, I would say it’s probably one of the better Thai spots. You want spicy? They’ll give it to you. However, they are lacking in speed, service and taste. Just a heads up, they either turn off their phone or just ignore calls. We tried to call and it kept going to voicemail. We had to drive here and order in person. Not a single person acknowledged us and they were moving very slowly. The girl (that wasn’t Thai) who took our order tonight was very unenthusiastic and I didn’t like her demeanor. She didn’t seem like she wanted to be there. She cut me off as I was ordering to talk to another customer who was asking for something. When you are attending to a customer, you focus on them. It’s so rude. The other customer can wait. No apology either. Asked her about the phone and she said “we have one but it just doesn’t stop ringing”. So you just don’t like to answer, got it. We had to wait 1.5 hours for the food but the restaurant itself was not busy. Apparently takeout was though or who knows.

Onto the food. First off, we ordered 3 dishes and got 2 rices. Papaya salad was disgustingly dry. Spicy which was great. No flavor and too much sugar. Me and my entire family can make papaya salad 5x better than this. Pad Krapow was the best thing we ordered. But on the sweeter side as well but at least normal sized. My sister ordered something with duck and they skimped on the duck. Flavor was okay. More veggies and sauce than meat. Not awful. We got the fish curry and it had too much sauce, not enough veggies and 3 tiny measly pieces of fish. These people are extremely cheap if you’re not ordering chicken so beware of that. Best Thai place in Tucson? Maybe, for some of you but it’s mediocre at...

I had high expectations from all the reviews...sadly reality did not live up to the hype. I oreder 3 dishes... the steamed spring rolls, pad thai and yum nua. The spring rolls (we call them summer rolls in Hawaii), were not good at all. Big pieces of iceberg lettuce, flavorless shrimp and very little noodles. It came with a peanut sauce that looked a little lumpy and weird. Unfortunately it tasted odd too. It didn't have deep peanut flavor. It was very mild and blandly sweet. I only ate half and pushed my plate away. Next up the beef salad. This has always been one of my favorite Thai dishes... not here though. The beef was so over cooked and hard, I've had jerky that was easier to bite and I'm sure my jerky had more flavor. There were only a few tomatoes, no mint and very few onions. The "dressing" was hot and had no umami factor. No sweet, hot, sour, or savory factor. It was like hot,bland Italian dressing but with no flavor. I also only took a few bites and pushed it away. The pad Thai was the only thing that had the least amount of flavor, although I would give it a 5 out of 10. I did eat most of that. The waitress was very nice. She brought over a take out container and I didnt have the heart to tell her I wasn't taking it home. Just as I was about done eating my pad Thai a homeless gentleman came in and asked for any leftover food. I told him he could take the summer rolls and/or the beef salad. He took the summer rolls, looked at the peanut sauce and the beef salad and wisely opted out. I wanted so badly to like this place but the food was sad, flavorless and...