Restaurants to Avoid

Someone wrote:
>I met some friends for lunch today at Thai Kitchen, a buffet restaurant
>at 5th and Colorado.  I normally like Thai food but what we had there was
>probably the single worst lunch I've had in Austin this year.

That's actually Thai Soon; Thai Kitchen is on Bee Caves.

I've had dinner at Thai Soon a few times.  Sometimes pretty good, but once something was really off.  Of course, I could say the same about Thai Kitchen.

My sincere apologies to Thai Kitchen - they are in fact quite good.  The real culprit is Thai Soon.  Thank you for the correction!

Someone wrote:
>I met some friends for lunch today at Thai Soon, a buffet restaurant
>at 5th and Colorado.  I normally like Thai food but what we had there was
>probably the single worst lunch I've had in Austin this year.
>
>The "seafood" consisted of overcooked catfish and tiny gray popcorn
>shrimp.  The vegetables were uniformly overcooked and faded.  There was
>SOMETHING in the medley that I was unable to chew or swallow; I think it
>might have been a piece of plastic.

The lunch buffet at Thai Soon is admittedly poor.  However, dinner there is quite good, and I've never had any problems with quality the half-dozen or so times I've been there for dinner.  A lot of variety, and quite inexpensive for seafood.

Give it another try at dinnertime.  I was last there about a month ago and it was as good as my previous experiences (i.e. no discernible negative trend).

To be fair to Thai Soon, I've never had a lunch buffet that really impressed me.  Its very nature (keeping large quantities of food over heat for long periods of time) seems anathema to quality.  About the only thing I can think of that wouldn't suffer from such treatment is soup.

tony