A while back, I purchased a groupon for Taste of Thai. Taste of Thai has two locations: Hillcrest and Del Mar. I’ve known about Taste of Thai since I first moved to San Diego. When I was in college, it seemed that the two most popular Thai places were Taste of Thai and Celadon. At the time, the two were located directly across the street from each other in Hillcrest. Celadon has since relocated and revamped its menu and style.
I was a loyal Celadon patron when I was in college, so I never visited Taste of Thai. Lately, when I pass by Hillcrest, I see the signs for the lunch specials, so I have been wanting to check it out for a while. So when the groupon appeared, I purchased one.
We went for a weekend lunch. Unfortunately, the lunch specials are only during the weekdays.
We started off with the Mee Krob appetizer, something we’ve never tried before.
The dish wasn’t what we were expecting. There was only a few pieces of chicken, which were fried and really dry. The majority of the dish consisted of the crispy fried rice noodles, which were tossed in a sweet and sour sauce. The dish reminded me of eating the crispy noodles dipped in sweet and sour sauce at American chinese restaurants.
After our appetizer arrived, our food took a really really long time. I don’t know what the hold up was because there were not many customers in the restaurant.
Fiance and I both really love the various Thai noodle dishes, so when we go out to eat Thai we always tend to order quite a few noodle dishes instead of more entree type dishes.
We ordered the Pad Thai.
I ordered it with Thai sausages, but the sausages in this dish were the chinese sausages. Still, I liked that they offered another option other than the standard chicken, pork, beef, shrimp. The pad thai okay tasting, but not great.
We also ordered the Pad See Ew.
I thought this dish was way too salty. I couldn’t eat more than a few bites. The noodles were also too choppy and cooked a little too long. They should be a little chewy and these were too soft.
Going into this experiences, my expectations were not that high, especially since we’ve had a lot more different thai places since our college days. But I was really disappointed by the food here. The servers were really friendly and our waters were constantly refilled. It’s too bad the food wasn’t as good.
Taste of Thai
527 University Ave
San Diego, CA 92103
I always went to Spices mainly because of proximity to home and work. Never got to try Celadon but always heard good things.
The Celadon now is blech. I liked how it was before. I’ve been to Spices a few times.
sorry you had to experience crappiness at taste of thai. it’s totally lame there and it’s always so noisy. i’ve only been there twice (1st out of curiosity and the 2nd because a friend wanted to have lunch tehre) and it sucked both times.
Hmm, I guess I should have asked the food bloggers before trying out this place. Would have saved me a crappy experience.
Hi Kirbie – We call that place “Waste of Thai-mm”. Unfortunately, it seems that lots of folks want very dumbed down Thai Food.
Heehee. Funny nickname.
My mom went to the del mar location MANY years ago and the one thing i remember her saying was ‘it was THE WORST THAI food ever’.
I always see coupons for this place and wanted to try it but my mom’s words haunted me so I’ve been hesitant to try this place.
The Mee Krob looked miserable! That totally looks like the cheap styrofoam- noodles you get at cheapy Chinese restaurants!
I’m not a huge lover of Thai food but my go-to place is Spices (only for lunch b/c they have great specials and it’s close to my house).
You should visit Chedi Thai in LJ. My friend and I really enjoyed it there (for both lunch and dinner). I really liked their Chilean Sea Bass dinner entree I had one time –
Sorry Taste of Thai wasn’t so great – but at least you had the Groupon 🙂
Yeah the groupon helped. Definitely won’t be back. Thanks for the recommendation. I will have to put Chedi on my to do list.