Our experience here just didn't come together. Sometimes when that happens at a restaurant it's hard to identify what exactly was not right. Of a piece, nothing really stood out as poor.
We met Christine O and Myles M for a late lunch. We're running a few minutes late. Latitude 8 faces Arizona Ave. even though the address is on Boston. The front is huge windows. As we drive by we can see Christine and Myles sitting at a table facing the window. All alone. The place is deserted except for the two of them.
A couple minutes later we were seated with them. The place is eerily dead. I don't think our server is normally a server and that could be part of the problem. She was rather pushy trying to sell appetizers and had a hard time taking no for an answer on soup.
We ordered chicken satay and very interesting sounding yellow curry crab cakes. The portions seemed small for the satay. There were 3 skewers and the morsel of chicken on each amounted to little more than 2 good sized bites. The crab cakes were decent sized and there were also three. Both the crab cakes and the satay were tasty but did not stand out.
For the entrees we shared pad thai, pineapple fried rice, spicy eggplant stir fry and panang curry with flank steak. I felt the portions were small on everything except the rice. The quality of the food was good overall with nice curries and fresh ingredients. Despite that, the food didn't wow.
Latitude 8 has a nice trendy atmosphere but the food just fell a little short when stacked against some of the other Thai restaurants I have visited in and around Phoenix and therefore only merits 3 stars.