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Sukhothai Restaurant
- Price Range:
-
$$$
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Attire:
- Casual
- Good for Groups:
- No
- Good for Kids:
- No
- Takes Reservations:
- Yes
- Delivery:
- No
- Take-out:
- Yes
- Waiter Service:
- Yes
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- Yes
- Outdoor Seating:
- No
- Alcohol:
- Beer & Wine Only
3 reviews for Sukhothai Restaurant
If there was a possibility of giving Sukhothai no stars, it would have been so.
My husband & I recently moved to Tampa this past summer & I have been searching for a good Thai restaurant. I passed this on my drive home one day & figured i would stop in for a quick roll for lunch.
I walked in to what seemed to be a charming little restaurant with two seating areas. I found the idea of the holes in the floor a wonderful idea for those who want to experience the tradition, yet can't fold their legs.
The gentlemen who greeted me seemed pretty friendly and overly excited to see me. He handed me a lunch menu & I ordered a spicy crunchy tuna roll to go. I have to admit, it was very good, not the best i have had, but good.
I managed to convince my husband to go for dinner that night, told him about the atmosphere & how good the roll was. What a mistake..
I did not go for sushi for dinner, i went for the Thai menu. Ah the menu.. quite confusing to say the least..instead of listing everything together, they had 4 different menus mashed into one big menu.
I ordered the fried squid for my app & my husband ordered the Kam Jeep (dumplings). The dumplings were cold and tasted like they were frozen, not even remotely fresh. I ended up sharing my app with my husband, which we both enjoyed, then again we were hungry so anything would have been good lol.
For our main courses he ordered a sushi platter & i ordered a shrimp & chicken pad thai. Our waiter (indian gentleman from earlier who didn't even remember me even though we had a 20 min convo while i waited for my spicy rolls..) asked how i liked my pad thai mild, medium or spicy. I specifically told him mild, absolutely no spice to it. He responded with "Not a problem".
We also ordered a 15 dollar Hawaiian roll to share, this will eventually come into play..
Our food comes out at the same time. My husband's sushi looks as if it's been sitting out for a while, not fresh at all & my pad thai looks like a plate of slime. My husband & I look at each other and say "Just eat, we're hungry then we'll get out of here".
I dig into my pad thai and the flavor overall is not terrible, but the texture is what it looks like, slimy, kinda like eating oysters..
I dig into one spot on my plate to find a mound of red hot spices BURIED IN MY FOOD!!! Um i CLEARLY asked for NO SPICE at all. I ask my husband to taste it because if it's tolerable, I'll eat it, now this is a man who can deal with spice and HE can't even deal with this hidden layer of red fire.
I call our waiter over, I explain what i found and show him as well, he proceeds to scream in my face with his putrid breath "OH SHIT!! OH SHIT!!" Now my husband & I are floored that a waiter would react in such a manner, yet laughing on the inside. Our waiter apologizes and says that he will yell at them in the kitchen and asks if I want them to just cook the dish a little more and mix up the spice because "Cooking it sometimes brings down the spiciness of whatever they put in" OR "I can have them make you a new plate" I ask for a new plate to be made..cooking it will bring down the spiciness?? YOU COOKED IT ONCE AND IT'S FREAKING SPICY, WHAT MAKES YOU THINK COOKING IT AGAIN WILL MAKE IT ANY LESS SPICY?!?
By this time our Hawaiian roll comes out and he takes my food away, i start to eat my 15 dollar Hawaiian roll that has horribly bitter & unripe mango on it. (BTW, Go across the way and get a awesome Hawaiian roll from SushiKo for 10 bucks) Now he comes back out with my food..a little TOO fast..
He puts my food down and says "Ok here is your new food i looked it over, i don't see anything spicy colored in it, so it should be good now", too bad power of suggestion didn't work in his favor.. He walked away before i could even taste my food.. It wasn't a new plate of food, it was my old plate of food, just recooked, with the pile of red spice now mixed about. You could CLEARLY see the red flecks of spice throughout my food. I did not dismiss it right away, I did try it.. unbearably spicy.. He came back to check on us, i told him that i could not eat it, it was still spicy. He apologized and said he would not charge us for the plate & asked if i would like anything else instead, I told him that the Hawaiian roll (minus the bitter mango that i peeled off) was just fine.
He then asked if we would like desert, my husband & I were so disgusted at this point, we politely declined. Our check was brought over promptly (we weren't even done eating) and we were basically forgotten about.
We could have walked out without paying, that's how annoyed they were with us i guess, but he noticed that we were still sitting there and sent a tall blond over to pick up our card.
In the end, somehow we ended up spending 70 dollars somewhere.. and ended up leaving a 5 dollar tip.
We will never eat here again, nor will we recommend "Sucky"Thai to anyone....EVER!!
One-star rating for abysmal service, compounded by the management.
My husband and I saw this on the way to this week's client site, and snarked about Thai/Sushi as a restaurant theme. Based on John H.'s 'not bad' review above, we decided to give it a chance.
The menu looked interesting - intriguing in some parts, and odd-to-scary in others. (Mind you, this is coming from people who have knowingly eaten "frog fat" (harsmar) - what we mean by "scary" is stuff like cheddar and strawberries on sushi. We didn't try those - maybe we should have; it would have been a more interesting experience.)
The "Thai" iced coffee is okay - a decent coffee with milk, not the speedball in a glass caffeine/sugar/fat sua da (Vietnamese iced coffee) that you get in lots of other places. They offer a "Thai tea" which I can't find a description of, and "cha yen" which is the usual Thai iced tea. Sukhothai's version is watery, but it took me far longer to find out than it should have. When I ordered it, the waitress asked me, "do you want the one with cream?" I clearly told her yes, the one with cream - she still brought me the non-creamed variety, and then blamed me for the error. By the time she returned with my drink, my husband had finished his, and he wasn't drinking quickly.
Meanwhile, she hadn't taken our food order in all this time. If my husband hadn't been as hungry as he was, we would probably have walked out at this point.
We ordered the Kanom Jeep (steamed pork dumpling with ginger and garlic sauce) - at $7.95 for 5 dumplings in a sauce that had no discernible garlic component, badly overpriced. They were bland and unmemorable. They also were very long in arriving.
The rest of our order was the Chirashi ($26.50) and #67 Mu Sarwan ($12.75). The chirashi came with miso soup and a salad, and all of these came out while we were still eating our dumplings. After the earlier delays, it was annoying to have the main courses dumped on us.
The Mu Sarwan (stir-fried pork with red curry topped with fried eggplant ) was tasty, although my first piece of eggplant was too oily for my taste. Not bad for the price, though.
The chirashi was overflowing with a "flower" of yellowtail, and slabs of tuna, salmon, conch, cucumbers, and octopus over tobiko and sushi rice. They draped a tightly curled tentacle over the side of the box - cute. They buried the wasabi in the corner, and I think the box was far too small for the portion - you really had to dig for the rice. The slices of sashimi were irregular - ragged edges and uneven thickness (within each slice, not just between slices!). The lighting was too dim for me to be sure, but I did wonder if it was carbon monoxide infused tuna. Fish quality over all was okay, not great. The rice was really cold, and nearly flavorless.
All of this would have merely been slightly annoying, and chalked up to "inexperienced waitress", except that while we were still eating our entrees, she came by to ask us if we wanted anything else. Boxes, for instance.
?!?! Boxes? While we were still eating?
And then "did we want to order anything else". She seemed to be so concerned about getting us to order more if we wanted anything that I asked her if the problem was that the kitchen was closing soon. She asked me, "well, do you know what time it 'is?" Surprisingly, considering how sluggish her service had been I hadn't been keeping an eye on the clock so I had no idea. She went back to the kitchen, announced that we had 10 minutes, and pressed again for an order. Given that we really had just started on our entrees, I begged off.
She came back about 5 minutes later to ask again. Now, we'd originally been intrigued by some of the desserts (the black sticky rice with caramel), but we were sufficiently put off by her service that we demurred, and told her the only other thing we'd need was the check.
She brought us the check promptly (mind you, we're still eating at this point) and then came back to see if we'd paid yet. WHILE WE WERE STILL EATING.
The manager visited several other tables around us, but never came to see our table. If he had, perhaps this could all have been dealt with better. As it was, I went out of the floor-seating area to get him to come to our table, and then outlined the service summary I've written above. He apologized, told us she was wrong to rush us, she was indeed new, and promised to talk to her and to her trainer. He suggested comping us dessert or additional drinks, neither of which we wanted. No offer to comp us for anything we'd already ordered.
At this point, they never came back to the table again, and we packed up the kiddo and walked out to the register, paid the bill and left without tipping.
The worst service experience we've had in a long time, and absolutely the worst service ever in a Thai restaurant. The Thai culture is renowned for gracious service, but Sukhothai might better be renamed "sucky Thai". I hope they improve.
I'm always skeptical of Thai places that serve sushi, but this place is not bad. Sushi is decent, and the regular Thai fare is pretty good.
**** Update ****
On a recent visit the chirashi was close to inedible. I will change entire review if a downward trend is apparent. Hopefully, it was just a bad day.
No great lunch deals, but dinner is reasonable. You could probably skip the $5 salad though.
The ambiance is run of the mill for a place like this but, they have a sit-on-the floor room if you'd like to, well, sit on the floor. The place is a bit small, so you'll be cramped if you're with a large party.
Service is decent, nothing mind blowing but I have had no complaints.
**** Update ****
Service was terrible, and I mean _terrible_ on last visit. Once again, I will change entire review if my next visit is as poor as my last.