I live a block from Muy Thai and received their coupon about their Grand Opening, so I went to line up yesterday/Saturday for their 12 noon opening
So, let me say this in the context of: I've lived in and visited Thailand several times.
Grand Opening experience:
- Lined up at 11:45
- Ended up waiting in line THREE HOURS until I got my food, bc of the "first 100 people get a free dish" deal
(Ended up getting sunburnt bc of the 3 hour wait...but that's not their fault; that's entirely mine heh)
Customer Service: 5/5 stars
- Because Muy Thai is part of the Colony ghost kitchens, you rarely see the employees/workers/chefs of any of these kitchens. But due to it being a Grand Opening, a few of their employees came out and were repeatedly handing out fee Thai iced tea, and when you got to the front of the line, one of their employees was super friendly and chatted with whoever was next in line.
Food: 3.5/5 stars
Because I waited THREE HOURS for the food, I figured that it would be a waste of my time if I only got 1 dish. Therefore, I got 4 dishes. Here's my thoughts on each of the dishes:
(A) Papaya Salad (som tum) = 3.5/5 stars
- Sauce = 4.5/5 stars
- Ingredients = 3/5 stars
The sauce flavoring was pretty on-point! However, my problem with the papaya salad was that when you make authentic papaya salad, you take slices of green papaya, tomatoes, and green beans and pound them in a mortar and pestle. Therefore, even though the main ingredient is papaya, there should still be a good amount of diced long beans and tomatoes in the salad, where the long beans are pounded together with the papaya and then the tomatoes are mixed together with the papaya and long beans.
However, in Muy Thai's papaya salad, there were only like 3-4 small pieces of long beans and 3 small pieces of tomatoes thrown on top of the papaya salad.
Also, keep in mind that the price is cheaper than the main entrees bc the papaya salad comes in a much smaller box, so the portion size is probably half of the size of the kra pow.
(B) Pad See Ew & Pad Thai = 3/5 stars
Both of these dishes have a problem that confuses me. See, when you make Thai noodle dishes, you marinate the meat and cook the meat super fast; take it out; then cook the sauce really briefly; then throw in your par-cooked noodles and let the noodles soak in some of the sauce and then throw in the meat. In other words, the noodles should also pick up some of the flavor from the sauce.
But for some odd reason, while the meat was full of taste and obviously marinated (although a tad bit too salty for my preference...but just a tad ), the noodles literally had no taste of sauce and tasted almost...tasteless, which makes me suspect that perhaps they're not actually cooking their noodles with the sauce, which is a shame.
(C) Beef Kra Pao =4/5 stars
Out of all the dishes, this one is probably my favorite. Then again, this is the one that they emphasized at their Grand Opening, so that's a good sign I wanted to try their Shrimp Kra Pao or Duck Kra Pao but they said that they're only making Chicken Kra Pao and Beef Kra Pao, so I chose Beef Kra Pao, with medium spice (they offer 4 levels: no spice, mild spice, medium spice, and "Thai spicy")
They also included an egg on top, which was really nice!
The flavors were really good and really balanced. If you eat the Kra Pao on its own, you'll prob feel that it's a little too salty. But given the fact that it's on top of white rice, when you eat it together with the rice, you'll feel that it's s good balance! It was a good balance of salty and spice, as well as a good balance of meat and diced long beans.
The only reason that I gave it only 4 stars is...well, at the end of the day, all it really is...is stir fry beef, basil, and long beans heh. I don't know how I feel about paying $13 for a dish with basically 3 ingredients (YouTube has a great Kra Pao recipe by Pailin's Kitchen).
On top of that, the portion sizes are a tad bit misleading:
- The Kra Pao boxes are the largest and deepest
- the pad Thai and pad see ew boxes are just as wide, but shorter
- the papaya salad has the smallest width and the shortest height.
If you think about it, the Kra Pao is half white rice, so it's not like you're getting an entire Kra Pao entreé that you might get at a Thai restaurant.
All in all:
- 5/5 for customer service. I would give 6/5 stars if I could
- 3.5/5 for the food, bc I have some issues with the authenticity/taste of it, as well as I feel it's a bit overpriced and can find 2-3x amount of food for 20-30% cheaper in Thai Town. But then again, this is Sawtelle, so I can't fully fault them for that...
So in total, I'd give them around a 3.75/5 stars, since I think food is where I place most of my opinion. But I don't have a problem with rounding up to 4 stars :)
(They also have curries, but I sorta didn't want to go back and replicate my experience of realizing that I was paying for a box where half of it was rice...heh ) read more