I'm super hesitant to give one star but this one is pretty darned close.
My wife and I LOVE our Thai food (please see my plethora of reviews for other Thai restaurants) and we've been itching to try this food truck for a while. Neither of us work downtown so we were really excited to hear that it was going to out and about on the weekend. We headed over and ordered our usual Thai standard bearers: Pad Krapow, Som Tum, Yellow Curry (chicken), and Pad Thai.
They were out of Pad Krapow, which I took to be a good sign. They didn't ask what level of spice we wanted (which I should have realized was a bad sign). We got everything else we wanted, rushed home...and were thoroughly disappointed. Here's a breakdown:
* Som Tum (aka Papaya Salad) - seriously lacking in garlic and tamarind flavor, actually lacking in any flavor at all. Very one dimensional. And it was warm so it wasn't refreshing at all either (granted that could be because we took it home instead of eating it then and there).
* Yellow Curry - no flavor. Huge vegetables which made it seem more like a stew except that the sauces was liquid and had no substance. Any flavor at all seemed to come from a mix or a picture of curry that they found on the interwebs. The sweet carrots were good but both they and the potatoes were mush, which tells me that it was sitting around for a long time before being served.
* Pad Thai - probably the best dish we got...which is like coming in third place in a contest with three people. This at least had some flavor but it was all noodles with very little chicken or serious flavoring.
On the plus side, the people working there were very nice and were at an event that benefits the community. I could be convinced to try them again but I was highly disappointed especially given the rabid following they've apparently built for themselves.
Which leads me to some conclusions:
a) people are being paid/coerced into giving 5-star ratings (not like people's kids or pets are being kidnapped but a free lunch or getting elite status could be meaningful to individuals who measure their self-worth by such standards),
b) people don't get out much and therefore don't know what good Thai food tastes like (not like there aren't any other Thai places anywhere in Honolulu),
c) an enterprising person could open up a food truck downtown that serves authentic thai food and clean up.
Of course maybe ya-ya knows the clientele better than I and what people working downtown really want is pretend Thai food so they can go back to the cube farm and boast to their cube mates about how cool they are because they got Thai food for lunch instead of Subway. "Oh, where did I get it you ask? At a little food truck you've probably never heard of. We follow each other on Twitter and Instagram." I imagine that's how hipster office workers sound. Then again, maybe they eat at a not-so-great thai place because it's ironic. That's some serious food for thought. read more