"Our Bangkok Thai experience was memorable from start to finish—in the way that some memories are traumatic enough to stick with you.Our adventure began with a discourse on spice levels. Namely, that the owner/chef was displeased with the chili pepper options available locally, so she bought, roasted, and created her own spicy pepper blends. These blends were reported to be WAY hotter than most Thai places. Thus, if we normally like our dishes “spicy,” we should order “medium.” The lesson was long, and the message was received loud and clear. We heard this speech multiple times throughout our time there, and it never wavered from customer to customer. We agreed to the emphatic recommendation and ordered our food “medium-plus.”The first course: Vegetable egg rolls. My girlfriend and I each bit into an eggroll, surprised to find them ice cold. As close to frozen as you can get without traveling to the Artic tundra. Naturally, I alerted the waiter, who explained that “several people have said that in the last week,” and proceeded to inform us that “sometimes the food cools down in transit from the kitchen to the table.” We can all agree that the thermal physics of eggrolls do not function in this way. The waiter took the two uneaten eggrolls—leaving the two single-bite, freezing cold eggrolls—and whisked them off to the kitchen.Meanwhile, our entrees arrived: tofu noodle soup for my girlfriend; pad thai for me. At first glance, we deduced that this house-made spice blend must be invisible, because there was no evidence of said spice on either of our dishes. Imagine our surprise when each dish had ZERO spice. Certainly not medium-plus, not medium, not mild. I would have comfortably fed my dish to a toddler—nay, to an infant—worrying not one iota about the spice level. We kindly requested a spicy tray, which arrived with each jar nearly empty: a testament to the downtrodden spice seekers before us.The eggrolls? Ah, yes. The waiter brought us the two eggrolls he’d whisked away earlier, and they were, indeed, fully cooked and piping hot. The two single-bite, frozen eggrolls still sitting untouched on our table? Not one word about those from the protagonist-turned-antagonist in our story. Instead, he told us with a tone of condescending confidence, “There was a reason these were cold—but I won’t get into it.” Just what every diner loves—an air of mystery!We ate our way through the bland and spice-less dishes, adding as much soy sauce and spicy condiments as possible. When the waiter returned to clear our dishes, he stared disappointingly at my girlfriend’s bowl—which was mostly finished, but not entirely empty. “The chef is going to be upset,” he said. My girlfriend, who was not expecting to be admonished about her almost-finished entrée, replied softly, “I ate as much as I could.”When the check arrived, my girlfriend slapped down her credit card without even glancing at the bill. From the booth behind us, another patron was explaining to the server that he should’ve just ordered his dish spicy, like he’d wanted to do (but was talked out of doing for fear of overdoing it on the spice level). The disappointment in his voice was louder than his words. When the server brought back the paid bill for my girlfriend to sign, we realized the total was wildly incorrect. Upon closer inspection, we found that we’d been charged for extra food and drinks. (But what about those eggrolls, you’re probably wondering. They took them off the bill, right? Reader: They did not.)At this point, the server—who was clearly afraid of the owner—threw in the towel and disappeared into the back, never to be seen again. The owner finally refunded the entire bill, then recharged my girlfriend’s card for the correct amount. No apology. No offer of recompense for the ice-cold eggrolls we paid for but did not consume. We left the restaurant in a state of spice-less shock, no endorphins running through our veins, buoyed only by the understanding that we would never, ever visit this restaurant again.Fin."
Rice Noodles
