Cafe Chinois - Wilmington, NC — Restaurant in Wilmington

My wife and I tried Cafe Chinois for the first time on a Saturday evening in June. I don't know why we never knew this place was here, but it is hidden a bit in a strip mall behind Smithfield's. We were surprised to find we were seated right away without any wait.

We sat in the left side of the restaurant, where there is a small bar, the hostess station, and a row of tables along the wall. Another room on the right side of the restaurant looked a little more lively, but I didn't really see much of it. Our table was comfortable and semi-private. The restaurant also had a small outdoor dining area. Overall, it has a nice vibe and seemed clean.

The restaurant was busy, but not packed. It seemed like they were doing some takeout as well, but I only saw five or six people picking up the whole time we were there. Our server was very good, but the food came out very slowly. We ordered drinks which were brought first, then an appetizer and salad. It was 40 minutes before the appetizer came out, followed by the salad a few minutes later. Our server kept apologizing, and went into the kitchen several times to see what was up. Anyway, this was really the only blemish in our visit. Our entrees came out probably 10-15 minutes later, which was perfect.

We had the Moo Todd, which was a fried pork appetizer with garlic and a sweet sauce. Very good, although not as garlicky as I'd hoped. We also had the Banana Blossom salad, which was wonderful - it has shrimp, duck, banana flowers, basil, cilantro, cucumbers, peanuts, onions, daikon radish ... anyway, you get the idea. It was a nice mixture with a really good, sweet dressing. We shared it and it was plenty big enough for the two of us.

At this point, we probably could have shared one entree, but we had each ordered our own. I had the Choo-Chee Salmon curry, which blew me away! It was a salmon filet on top of a red curry sauce and a "five treasure" rice that was amazing. There were a ton of not-mentioned ingredients in this dish that took it to another level. It was both sweet and spicy (I ordered it Hot, which is their medium level, and I would call it on the mild side). I WILL order this again when I go back! My wife had Korean Japchae, a noodle dish with tofu and chicken (added). She wasn't crazy about it at first, but it grew on her and she took the leftovers home to enjoy later. It had a nice flavor of sesame oil and was also mildly spicy. The noodles were supposed to be sweet potato noodles, but they seemed like regular translucent rice noodles.

We didn't have any alcohol, but I enjoyed my Thai ice tea, which had whipped cream and a sweet syrupy flavor. We were too full for dessert, although the coconut cake I saw in some other reviews looked awesome.

Despite the kitchen being a little slow in delivering our food, we definitely enjoyed Cafe Chinois and we...

My friends and I decided to try this place since we love Thai cuisine.

The atmosphere is beautiful, very update indochine vibes! But that was all it really had going for it unfortunately. We went on a late lunch and had about an hour to spare before we all had to be somewhere. We ordered 2 appetizers (crab ragoons and a dumpling thing) and 3 entrée meals (2 chicken pad Thai, and a Vietnamese chicken dish with glass noodles)

The apps came at a good time. They were plated very average. The crab ragoons looked burned at the edges and when my friend opened them up it was completely Yellow inside. Now I'm a big fan of crab ragoons, some might call me slightly obessesive. So when my friend offered on to me i was so excited to try it. However, These were 100% the nastiest disgrace to a crab ragoon I have ever tried in my entire life. It almost tasted like egg salad with an awkward burnt wonton wrapper. It was dreadful. My friend ordered the dumpling thing and said they were okay but nothing amazing.

After our appetizers came we waited for almost a hour with no word on our food. With about 15 mins before we needed to leave we asked what was going on and if we could get an eta on our food. They advised it would be just a few more minutes because the noodles needed to soak more. We asked them to place them in To-go containers because we were now pressed for time. 5 minutes pass and the cook comes out to our table and explains the noodles for the pad Thai were not working and asked my friends if they wanted other noodles instead, my friends agreed to switch noodles and about 5 minutes later our food was ready.

The manager and cook were very apologetic and we understood that things happen and it wasn't that big of an issue. The manager ended up making our meals all half off which was very kind.

We get to our location and all go to eat our meals finally. We all took about two bites and looked at each other in horror with how absolutely horrendous the food was.

It was absolutely atrocious, not a I can eat it but I wouldn't order it again type of thing, no I mean 2 bites and that's all we could take. None of us got seafood yet it tasted like we all were eating fish. It was almost rancid tasting. The portions were very large which was the only nice thing about the food. I'm honestly very shocked how terrible the food really was and can't see this place lasting much longer with food like this.

Truly an embarrassment to Thai cuisine.

We threw it all in the trash and had to door dash McDonald's because we were starving.

I would never recommend this place. I would however recommend the interior designer because they did a fabulous job, and the manager and waitress we had were...

It took me a really long time to finally get to eat here, but it was so worth the wait. Wait. I had heard that Indonesian had opened a sister restaurant just feet from my house and so I tried to go a number of times. But they're closed on Sundays which was usually one of my days to eat out, so that was no good and then a couple other times I went they weren't open either. But yesterday they were open. Small place from the front but when I went in it was more than three times. The size I expected. And the decorations and room design was awesome. Really cool colors, eclectic walls with all kinds of art and some giant pottery with beautiful plants. It was just beautiful. I had already looked at the lunch menu to get an idea of what I wanted to try. I'm not very familiar with Asian food so I tend to go for something that sounds like something I know. And looking at what my friends ended up getting. I definitely want to try that next time. We did a lot of looking around at what other people were eating and it was tough to identify but everything looks delicious. Especially this tall white cake that the people next to us had. And he said it was a coconut cake. I don't usually order desserts, and definitely not coconut things, but it looked delicious and so the whole table shared and it even came with ice cream, coconut ice cream which didn't have chunks of coconut in it and it was delicious. Even my friend who doesn't like the texture of coconut really enjoyed it. It was awesome. The service was great. Right down to the take-home boxes were starting. My friends love it there so much that they order extra meals so they can have it the next day. I would not hesitate to recommend going there. It was aesthetically pleasing to the eye and a treat...