5/10. O.K. so what's up with this place? Granted, the darkness and dinginess could be a legitimate part of "atmosphere", but did they really have to have the non-chandelier with 20 bulbs hanging from the ceiling connected by black wires to a central location? It looks faintly threatening - like a gigantic spider waiting to pounce on the customers.
The spider does go well with the pseudo-gangster like visages of the waiting staff. One might feel part of an Asian B-movie here. There also seems to be lot of activity inside the kitchen with hardy men carrying massive sacks of jasmine rice (?) back and forth. Being observant, I noticed they were taking the sacks out of the kitchen rather than into the kitchen. The food took an eternity to arrive. I was left wondering if the cook was caught embezzling gang monies and Boss Yamamoto was suggesting he be carved up. Those sacks...
Waiter-in-chief didnt like me at all. He consistently looked suspiciously in my direction and my notebook. Was I going to join the cook on the chopping block?? Thankfully part of the food arrived after forty minutes - shrimp fritters. They were OK, not spectacular but not bad either. The massaman curry did not arrive until an hour had passed, all told. That did make me wonder - shouldn't they have gobs of this stuff ready for serving at any given time? Its about the most standard dish you can order at a South East Asian restaurant, rather like a burger at MacD.
The good thing was that the massaman curry was very good. I asked for spicy and I got spicy. Not burn-a-hole-in-your-stomach spicy but allow-me-to-lightly-spank-you spicy. So that is the silver lining in the spice cloud.
