Khao Sarn

Let me tell you what. We ordered food from here and it was so good, actually, it is so good we had to write this review before we even finished. We are still stuffing our faces. I also instagrammed a pic of the glass noodles and it received 82 likes. Now that’s what I call return on investment!!! Ha. hahaha.
No but seriously this food is great. You’re seriously dropping the ball if you read this review and end up selecting somewhere else to eat. Get the Tom Kha soup WITH TOFU.
Is the green curry too spicy, you ask? Not in the slightest. It’s the perfect balance of spicy, savory, and sweet, and co-​mingling on the thai dancefloor that is your palate. Get ready for a real wild one ladies and gents, this thai cuisine is comin in hot and it is served up fresh. Get ready for an experience like no other and dive head first into this inspired yet classic menu.

We ordered the $ 8! lunch special that comes with a protein and a starter. The portions were very filling. The spring rolls were exquisite full of vegetables and it came with a delicious tangy pineapple sauce; I wish they were bigger. The tofu PadThai was excellent just the right as well as the Chicken Pad Thai but my favorite dish was the chicken fried rice which came with scramble eggs, little sprouts and it was so delicious that I even thought about ordering it for dinner. We will definitely order take out again and will try the drunken noodles. Prompt delivery service a plus about half an hour.

My coworkers and I had food from Khao Sarn delivered to our place of employment during lunch time. The delivery man was very kind and it took him about 30 minutes to deliver us our food from the time that we originally called in our lunch order. We were provided with extra condiments and necessities along with our food.
I had one of the $ 8.00 lunch specials which was
Thai Fried Rice with Chicken. Khao Sarn provides you with the option of having Spring Rolls as part of the lunch special. The Thai Fried Rice w /​Chicken was hot, fresh and tasted delicious! Although the Spring Rolls are very small, my coworkers and I raved about how good they tasted… The food was seasoned without being overpowering. All in all, I received quite a bit of food for a great price. My coworkers commented on their Chicken Pad Thai being flavorful.

Wow — just want to echo everyone who has mentioned the terrible server who stone-​cold stares at you the entire meal! That was the most awkward dining experience of my life — she was literally standing there at the counter 4 feet away, motionless, just staring directly at my son and me for 45 minutes! Not even folding napkins or doing any kind of busywork.
Aside from that, I saw a male employee exit the men’s toilet and NOT WASH HIS HANDS. I should’ve hightailed it out of there that second, but instead I told the management (I know — bad idea). GROSS. So there was probably pee-​hand residue or intentional pubes in my food — ugh.
Next time I’m making the extra effort to walk up to Amarin, which has the best pad see ew ever, and much more generous portions too.

Foods great, my server was not. she stared at me the whole time I was eating, making comments to her co-​worker, that sure feels comfortable. I ask for the check she brings it tells me it’s cash only I pull out cash and then walks away for 7 – 10 minutes. not like I have to be back at work or anything. I say thank you and all she does is gawk at the (appropriate, generous at this point)20% tip I left. its so nice to be judged from the moment you walk into a restaurant to the moment you leave. I won’t be coming back here

I’m not big on thai food but I enjoyed my meal here very much. I went for the fried chicken dumplings and was surprised at how much I liked them. I would definitely come back if I was back in the area. The staff was also very friendly and welcoming. Overall, good experience!

Oops i should have written this ages ago. I dont eat thai as much as i did 15 years ago but i still prefer this shop over other local thai options for take out, and get it every few weeks. the new space looks nice for eating in too (but I have not). Im a big fan of the green curry, the drunken noodles and the pad see ew. (i always add a side of steamed veggies to the order because adding them tones down the heavy savory sauces and it alleviates my guilt for indulging.) the lunch special is great and goes til 4.

Middling Thai food. Overpriced.

We enjoyed our food very much, and it was very affordable, our check was only $ 20. We ordered curry puffs and ginger noodles. The service was fine, but we were the only ones there probably because it was Sunday after Christmas. The décor isn’t anything to write home about, but I give it 5 star for the tasty food.

Pad Thais are my favorite dish and I enjoy both authentic and americanized. To me, a ruined pad thai is dry noodles and watered-​down flavor. I’ve ordered so much of the dish delivery that I’ve noticed certain restaurants can be hit or miss with it.
I used to live half a block from Khao Sarn’s original location and their pad thai was perfection. About a year before they moved down the street, their pad thais really started to suck (just too dry). I got tired of taking the gamble so I switched to other restaurants. Then I came into their new restaurant hoping their quality would mirror their upgrade… Nope. Same bland flavor and dry noodles. Maybe I’m crazy and eat way too much pad thai. But I’m telling you, I’m not eating there anymore. I highly suggest the Rhong Tiam thai truck.

We have only ordered delivery from here so I can’t speak to the dining experience or service, but seamless is always fast, hot, and delicious. Have had quite a few of the noodle dishes — Pad Thai, Pad See Ew, Pad Kee Mow, and my personal favorite the Red Curry. Delish!
Hope to stop in to eat sometime, however typically when we eat Thai it is take out…

Ordered a delivery. It never showed up. They lied to me on the phone and told me the food was on its way when they didn’t even know if it had been cooked. Baaaaaad service. Very bad.

When I used to live nearby, Khao Sarn was my go to Thai place for take out and I frequently met friends there. The most recent reviews since they changed locations have been of the 5star/​1star variety so I wanted to see what the deal was.
Pros: The new location is much nicer than the old one. The food is satisfactory.
Cons: The food is satisfactory. The veggie duck (in my opinion the real reason to go there) wasn’t cooked well (it was tough, too crispy, overdone and a small quantity) and some of the dishes we ordered just weren’t very good. In terms of service they messed up the orders of two members of my group which was frustrating and they aggressively push beer and wine to the point where you’ll feel like there’s a drink minimum to sit at the table.
Overall: The food is more or less alright, but there are better options out there. I’ll be back at some point if I’m in the area and desperately craving Thai, but the whole experience was unremarkable.

Lunch specials are the bomb! Starting at $ 8 for an appetizer and main. Always a place to sit.

Friendly, pro service, loved the quick, fresh dumplings, boo dug the drunk noods, I loved the basil fried rice. Loved it! We just don’t understand the bad reviews. The service the food the ambience are way be on the price. Come get you some. We out.

This place is terrible!!! Bad food, bad service, and the prices they charge in the store are higher than what it says online. Buyer beware… check your receipt. Here’s our experience…
We ordered food for pickup. They made the wrong thing (made garlic chicken instead of ginger chicken) and also tried to charge us the wrong amount. We noticed that the prices online were different than prices on the store menu by $ 2 – 3 for some individual items. That changes the bill a good amount when you have a bigger order. Took them about 10 mins or more to fix it, and no apologies for any of the mishaps.
Food was lukewarm and they also didn’t give us the rice that was supposed to come with the entrees. Maybe most importantly, the food itself was pretty bad. I’ve been to Thailand and I’m not expecting it to be that quality. But this tasted like you bought Thai food from a truck stop in West Virginia. Not authentic, not spicy, and well… not good at all.
Needless to say, never going back here with better options in the area. I would advise avoiding them unless you’re desperate.

Gah. Where to start?
We ate here on a Wednesday evening, the place was quite empty. Our server was an older lady, who had, to say the least, an intense stare. Our table was at the front of the restaurant and for most of our meal she stood a few steps at the counter, just staring. It was very creepy. She also seemed borderline pissed off that we didn’t order any beer and were fine with water.
We ordered summer rolls to start with, expecting fresh thai basil and crunch, but instead getting a soggy roll filled with one shrimp cut in two, lettuce, and a lot of celery. Celery! In a summer roll! WTF??? The whole thing just ended up tasting like celery, and sadness.
For mains we had Pad Thai (generic, bland) and pineapple fried rice (wet), all the while still under the watchful gaze of our steely eyed server. Both dishes were below average, especially when you’ve tasted the Rhong-​tiam food truck’s versions (we should have walked those three extra blocks).
It makes it all the worse to think that this location used to be the very much missed Potlikker, RIP.

$ 9 lunch special? Sure! Even if it’s mediocre it’s still worth it.
Never again. Terrible, tasteless spring rolls. Even more bland drunken noodles. I’ll spend the extra few bucks next time and get something decent.

I live in the area and ordered pickup — the spring rolls (4 for $ 4) and the green curry ($ 12). First off, the spring rolls were small and they were the kind that you can buy frozen in a bag from an Asian grocery store — and $ 1 each? I would have paid $ 1 for 4, but these sucked. And the green curry barely had any chicken in it, and had string beans (which was a first for green curry). It wasn’t as spicy as I had hoped — and the portion sizes were small! I ordered from another nearby Thai place before and they gave me my green curry in a large container — this place was $ 2 more expensive and served it in one of the smaller containers.
Oh well, I live nearby and I was always curious about this place. Needless to say, I will never be returning to eat here unless there was a zombie apocalypse and I had to steal food and stock up from somewhere close.

Great food. Unfortunately the music they play is just garbage, and they play it too darn loud too. It really ruins the experience for me… But I still come back for the good food.

I absolutely adore this place!
I normally order one for delivery but I recently had the pleasure of dining in the actual restaurant. It is a tiny space but still feels very open and not crowded as a lot of NYC restaurants make you feel squished with other people. I always order the Pad Thai and fresh summer rolls when ordering delivery so of course I ordered it when dining there. Each time I get it I swear the taste gets better and better! I can’t wait to be back in NYC to have some more!

TL;DR: Small portions, lacking flavor, lazy service, DENIED dessert twice.
Visited this place twice in the past 5 days– AVERAGE thai food. Lacking flavor… AND. The same lady denied us dessert TWICE. (You don’t get in between me and my dessert.)
First time was at 3pm on a Saturday. We ordered dessert but this older lady said no because she was on her break… WTF??? They are still open the whole day– it is not like japanese restaurants where they have a gap 3−5pm. I didn’t argue because I just happened to see my boss in the same restaurant and I had to just focus on talking to him instead.
The second time was tonight when I ordered before the kitchen closed like the young waitress said to. I ordered the thai donuts. Then the other older lady started cleaning my plate when I wasn’t even done and I asked for the dessert and she said sorry, the kitchen closed already so they can’t make it. We were like wtf but we ordered it before it closed. That was the first thing we ordered. And they said the kitchen closed so we couldn’t get the deep fryer to work blah blah blah FUCK that.
Never going there again.

This place is ok. Nothing that special. The food has decent flavor, but nothing mind blowing. I dont think that I would make much of an effort to go back again.

Khao Sarn has been a favorite spot for Thai, because let’s face it — the Thai options in Williamsburg and Greenpoint (where I live) aren’t amazing. I’m speaking from a vegetarian perspective, anyway.
It’s in a new location which is cleaner, brighter and warmer (in winter, anyway).
I always go for the Tom Yum soup, and often Pad See Ew. The options available for vegetarians are veggies, tofu, veggie duck, or veggie fish. A nice selection! I have also enjoyed curries and Drunken Noodles here.
This place is definitely a bit more expensive than some nearby Thai spots. They do have happy hour drink specials, though. Service is very friendly and helpful.

Such amazing and authentic food! The owner and servers are so nice too. I feel at home here.

I have ordered takeout from Khao Sarn many many times. Unfortunately, over the last few months, I have found that the quality of their food has gone downhill.
Usually I order the drunken noodles, which do have a nice flavor, however, on one occasion, the only chicken in there were small stringy pieces of chicken which looked like «afterthoughts.» The size of the portion has gone down considerably, and the food has gotten a lot more oily.
However, on my most recent order, I was literally pulling out small fibrous pieces of some substance from the food, were enough to put me over the edge. maybe it was lemongrass, but frankly, I’ve had thai food at countless thai restaurants and have never had to spit out anything, so that is no excuse even if it was lemongrass. it shouldn’t be as hard as wood.
Oh yeah, and they didn’t even include utensils.
I won’t be going back to find out.

Khao Sarn stands on the corner of a South Williamsburg street that has seen worse days but somehow manages to look like it has seen better days. The irony.
The dusty green awning with faded gold lettering invokes some kind of eastern medicine pharmacy that should be tucked away into an old part of Chinatown, certainly misplaced as the awning for any restaurant in Williamsburg.
Once you step in the place looks like an old bar/​restaurant in Saigon. Old wooden bar with christmas lights, duct tape over the front windows which do their best to keep out the winter draft. Exposed insulation glue on the walls… I suppose the whole place is doing it’s best to mimic the real feel of Thailand: ratchet and broken down with design cues from 2 decades past.
The food here is ok. I can’t say anything was bad, but I really can’t say any of it was great. They have a dinner prix fixe option which is actually a pretty good deal in terms of value. For $ 20 you get :
–Tom Yum Soup
— One Appetizer
— One Entrée
— A free drink beer/​wine etc.
The Tom Yum had a sour note and was spicy… but seemed to be missing the hint of lime. It definitely wasn’t what I was used to…
For appetizer I got the e-​san sausage, which is fresh pork sausages. They definitely tasted like fresh pork, but again I just can’t say they were good. I mean the stuff tasted fresh and it was well fried but the dish just wasn’t amazing. Note: I don’t think anyone ever orders this dish because the waitress came by and asked if we ordered dumplings and I told her I ordered «e-​san sausages» and was pretty sure the dish she was holding was mine, but she didn’t think it was and went around every table asking if it was there’s before the other waitress came by and told her it was actually my dish.
My entrée was spicy fried rice with shrimp… and again this is just mediocre. All Thai rice seems to be heavy in grease and this didn’t disappoint in that regard. But the flavor profile was… ok, some peppers and onions. It just wasn’t very spicy though.
Lowlights of the experience: my dining companion ordered basil crispy duck and they didn’t bring it until about 10 mintues after I had finished everything. It took them probably 30 minutes to bring this dish out… not sure what the hold up was.
Also this place is cash only, which automatically earns a deduction from me. Conveniently they placed an ATM at the front of the restaurant which they probably a cut of the ATM fee every time you take cash out to pay the bill. The staff seemed to be fully Thai howerver, and they did replace my Thai Ice Tea with a Thai Iced Coffee after I mistakenly ordered the wrong thing and tasted what seemed like simple syrup doused on top of milk and tea.
Still, this place earns no more than 3 stars. Ok food but deductions for the décor, slow serving of some dishes and cash only.