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| - I have been to Red Orchid once before, and it was really good - but the spice levels are quite humbling. A spiciness level 3 at Red Orchid is another Thai restaurants level 8 or 9. Beware, or be prepared to be humbled. I can confidently say that tonight's visit ranks as the weirdest of bizarro restaurant visits I've experienced in my 20+ years of restaurant dining. We sit down, and I order a Thai iced tea and him, a water. We order two Tom Kha soups, mine with shrimp at a spice level of 3 and him a chicken with a spice level of 5. When they arrive, mine is the level 5 and his is the level 3. So we send them back. This time, they arrive and mine is correct but his is shrimp, not chicken. So we send his back...I eat my soup and by the time that his soup comes, our entrees are in hand too. He has the drunken noodles with beef, and I have the chicken noodle soup. His entree is perfect, prepared properly and exactly what he asked for. My chicken noodle soup on the other hand, is rice noodles in water with white chicken, scallions and cilantro. Utterly flavorless, short of what little flavor that the chicken meat offers. So I'm trying to eat this chicken and noodle water with vegetation, because I didn't want to further embarrass myself by sending this soup back after the Tom Kha fiasco. Unfortunately, I couldn't take it so I asked for some chili pepper oil or something. So she insists on taking the soup back to have some soy sauce or salt mixed in, which I agree because just want to eat my dinner in peace. She brings it back and it's not any better. So my waitress comes back and asks me if I want something else. I resist, but she insists, so I opted for the drunken noodles that my husband had. She brings that to the table a few minutes later, asks me how it is - I was thrilled!!! She then tells me that the boss is yelling at her, and motions toward an angry looking woman who is crossing the rear of the restaurant. I smile, and tell the woman that the drunken noodles are amazing and that I'm very satisfied.
After a little bit, I ask her to box up the noodles since I want to take the rest home. I ask about the mango sticky rice and she said that the mango is giant eagle because they're out of season. She encourages me to try one of the more seasonally appropriate desserts even though the mango sticky rice is one of the specials. I order a thai pumpkin sticky rice and she tells me that she's going to charge me for half of the soup I sent back. We balk at this since we learned this after she insisted that I ordered something else, and after I've eaten the new dish. My husband becomes annoyed and speaks up - the waitress informed him that if we don't pay for the dish, she has to. We weren't understanding this concept, and a second waitress is attracted to the situation in the quiet restaurant. I'm so embarrassed I want to disappear, when a third waitress comes to the table and informs us that the "boss" charges them for their mistakes and that the waitress was going to have to pay for the two original tom kha mistakes. I'm flabbergasted by the injustice of this knowing that it is against the law for them to do this to an employee since situations like these are the cost of doing business, and also horrified that we're being bullied into paying for something that wasn't our fault, simply because we feel bad for our waitress. It's not her fault that she's not great at her job, but that's not an appropriate source of cost recovery. We will think twice about eating there again, and maybe you should too. Monday, I will be contacting the Pennsylvania Bureau of Labor Law Compliance and the U.S. Department of Labor to report that the "Boss" is doing this to their employees.
My waitress goes back to the kitchen to put in my dessert order, and I can hear the boss screaming at her from two rooms away. It was not a good situation to be in. What's pretty on the inside isn't always pretty in the kitchen. Buyer beware.
14 hours later: my husband and I have been sicker than a dog since our visit. We won't be returning.
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