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| - This restaurant is somewhere between two and three stars, but it doesn't quite deserve that third star. It doesn't really deserve even two and a half stars. Disclaimer, all I ordered and ate was the chicken pad thai. I called in to place my order and the woman who took my order was less than pleasant. She seemed to be in a rush to get off the phone. When I got there to pick up my order, it was almost completely empty. I also asked for an extra fork which was met by a look of disdain. Fine. The final cost was $12.16, which might be pretty steep for a late lunch (~4:45pm), but it would be worth it for delicious pad thai.
When I opened the box, I found white noodles. WHITE NOODLES. I've had my fair share of pad thai, and while I may not be a fan of thai food in general, my favorite food, by far, is pad thai. Anyway, back to the white noodles. When I actually ordered this, I specifically asked for extra sauce. Every time I've ever eaten, or even seen for that matter, pad thai, they always have a rich brownish-(almost) reddish color (given by the tamarind used in traditional pad thai sauce). The first bite I took was lacking in flavor in almost every way, except for a mild sweet background flavor. Every bite after that got a little worse. A few squeezes of lime helped a bit, but it could only do so much. The chicken was entirely inedible. It tasted like chicken. And nothing else. As if they fried the chicken in its own juices and nothing else, not even salt. The egg had the same problem, but, to be fair, I'm not a fan of eggs to begin with. The only thing that makes the dish better than just one star was that the noodle quality was near-perfect. Long noodles go a long way in bettering an eating experience. They also kept their integrity, not falling apart and breaking as soon as you pulled them away from the eating container. That was the ONLY thing that kept this rating from being a one star.
If you didn't bother reading this entire review, let me just sum it up in one sentence: Go to Thara Thai; way better, cheaper, and bigger portions. And the BEST pad thai in Champaign.
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